1 hurt in grenade blast inside Army’s 5th Infantry Division in Isabela
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MANILA, Philippines – One was injured after a hand grenade exploded inside the headquarters of the Army’s 5th Infantry Division in Isabela on Monday, the military said.
First Lieutenant Rowena Abayon, spokesperson of the Army’s 5th ID, said the explosion occurred at the Philippine Army Assistance for Rural Advancement of Literacy at its headquarters in Gamu, Isabela at 9:45 a.m.
The hand grenade exploded under a Mitsubishi van with seven passengers. A certain Felipe Cariño, Vice Chairman of Cordillera Forum for Peace and Development (CFPD), was injured.
Cariño who sustained injuries on his lower extremities was brought to the camp’s station hospital for treatment, Abayon said.
The van’s front windshield was shattered and its front tires were blown out in the blast, she added.
An investigation is being conducted by the police.
The 5th ID leadership considered this an “isolated incident,” and will still push through with the scheduled opening of Candidate Soldier Course on Wednesday. The applicants are members of the CFPD, formerly known as Cordillera People’s Liberation Army.
The integration of CFPD members as a regular force of the Armed Forces of the Philippines is pursuant to a closure agreement between the Government of the Philippines and the CPLA signed in July 2011, called “Towards the Cordillera People’s Liberation Army’s Final Disposition of Arms and Forces and its Transformation into a Potent Socio-Economic and Unarmed Force and for other Purposes.”
In the early 1980s, Father Conrado Balweg and his group of indigenous peoples from the provinces of Kalinga, Apayao, Ifugao, Abra, Mountain Province and Benguet as members, forged an alliance with the Communist Party of the Philippines/ New People’s Army to fight the government, but later broke away from the rebels and formed the CPLA.
