Police still clueless on Iligan blast

ILIGAN CITY, Philippines  – Police authorities said they were still piecing up evidence to determine the motive and the identity of the suspects in Saturday’s grenade attack that killed two people (not three as earlier reported by authorities) and wounded 36 others.

LOOKING FOR CLUES. A police investigator gathers evidence at the blast site after an unidentified man tossed an explosive device into a crowded bar in Iligan City Saturday evening. AFP

“So far we don’t have suspects yet but the police were conducting the investigation,” Colonel Daniel Lucero, commander of the Army’s 103rd Infantry Brigade, said on  Sunday.

Many of the injured were students on a night’s out on El Centro, a section of Roxas and Quezon Avenues which has become a popular rendezvous for many Iliganons especially during Saturdays because live bands play there.

One of the fatalities was earlier identified by the police as Junel Dumalagan.
Chief Supt. Celso Regencia, city police chief, said the unidentified man who lobbed the explosive around 7:50 p.m. had fled using an Asian Utility Vehicle.
It was not immediately known, Regencia said, how many people were on the AUV as it sped off amid the chaos.
The injured victims were rushed to hospitals by volunteers, policemen and soldiers responding to the incident, he said.
The explosion occurred amid intelligence reports of a terrorist plot in the city but Regencia said this was not enough to draw conclusions on the identities of the perpetrators.

“We are still trying to find out who they were and what the motives were,” he said.

In July 2010, a grenade attack in the city was blamed on a group of car thieves, who were angered by a police crackdown on their activities.
Seven people were injured in the said blast that hit the Iligan public market.

In July 2009, a car bomb also exploded in the city, wounding at least 9 persons, including three soldiers.

The police and the military did not make public the result of their succeeding investigations of the incident but they initially said the attack was terror-related.