Blast rocks Cotabato City as another bomb found

COTABATO CITY, Philippines—A powerful improvised explosive device went off Monday night here while another bomb was found outside the packed Shariff Kabungsuan Cultural Center inside the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) compound, the police said.

Nobody was harmed in both incidents although a commotion ensued at the cultural center – where a fashion show featuring Moro creations was being held at the time – when news of the discovery of explosive quickly spread, according to Superintendent Danny Reyes, city police chief.

He said the powerful blast occurred near the Sero Elementary School along Sinsuat Ave. around 8:45 p.m., almost the same time the second bomb was discovered by a civilian.

The two areas were about one kilometer apart.

The second bomb, tucked under an air-conditioning unit, was defused by police and military bomb experts.

Colonel Dorotheo Jose Jalandoni, commander of the 7th Marine Battalion Landing Team, said those who planted the second bomb, fashioned out of an 81-millimeter mortar shell, had apparently failed to detonate it on time.

It was fitted with a mobile phone as trigger mechanism, he said.

Reyes said police investigators could only suspect that the explosion and the bomb find had something to do with the celebration or the change of leadership of the ARMM.

“We are looking at all the angles in these incidents,” he said.

Former Anak Mindanao party-list Representative Mujiv Hataman had been appointed by President Aquino as interim governor after he was picked by a Malacañang-commissioned screening committee from a shortlist that included powerful ARMM politicians.

Hataman’s appointment and those of other officers-in-charge were prompted by the rescheduling of the regional polls from August 16, 2011 to May 2013.

In August, two IEDs also went off along a road leading to the ARMM complex, where a public forum for aspirants of the regional interim posts was being held.

Mayor Japal Guiani Jr. said security had been tightened in the city to ensure the safety of his constituents from the result of political animosities in the ARMM.

The city is ARMM’s provisional seat of government even if it is not part of the region, which groups Maguindanao, Sulu, Basilan, Tawi-Tawi and Lanao del Sur.