Police hunting down owner of vehicle in Tacurong car bomb blast

MANILA, Philippines—Police were hunting down the alleged buyer of the vehicle used as a car bomb in the Tacurong City roadside blast that killed two people and wounded six last Monday.

Special Investigation Task Group Pareñas has been in hot pursuit of Jay R. Reyes, Sultan Kudarat police chief Senior Superintendent Danilo Peralta said Friday.

But Peralta said police needed to establish the identity of Reyes. Investigators believed that Reyes’ name might be fictitious as they found no records on him at the Land Transportation Office, civil registry, Social Security System, and Commission on Elections.

One of the suspects, Datu Karim Masdal, was caught after the blast that missed  Maguindanao Governor Esmael Mangudadatu, whose bullet-resistant van was leading a seven-vehicle convoy to his birthday celebration Monday when a parked car laden with a 105 mm howitzer round blew up and struck the fourth vehicle in his entourage.

Masdal, who also went by the name Alibara Masdal, faces charges of double murder and multiple frustrated murder, said the chief of the Directorate for Integrated Police Operations in Western Mindanao Director Felicisimo Khu.

Masdal was identified by witnesses as the man who left the car bomb before it exploded, said Bartolome.

Mangudadatu told investigators he has been receiving death threats. He suspected political rivals rather than Muslim militants in the attack.

Mangudadatu, an ex-town mayor, rose to prominence in November 2009 when 57 people — including his wife, sisters, supporters and at least 31 journalists — were gunned down in Maguindanao in a massacre that was blamed on his political rivals, the Ampatuans.

The group was attacked while they were traveling to register Mangudadatu’s candidacy for governor, a position he later won by a landslide. A powerful family patriarch and former governor, Andal Ampatuan Sr., and a number of his sons are among the 196 people accused in the massacre.

They have been charged with murder and put on trial in Manila. The Ampatuans have denied any involvement in the killings and pointed to Muslim guerrillas as possible suspects.

Sultan Kudarat and nearby Maguindanao, about 590 miles (950 kilometers) southeast of Manila, are in a violent region that teems with Muslim guerrillas and warlord clans with private armies.

Muslim guerrillas belonging to the main Moro Islamic Liberation Front clashed with Mangudadatu’s followers in Maguindanao in April over a land dispute, but rebel spokesman Von Al Haq said his group had nothing to do with Monday’s car bomb. With The Associated Press