Part of job: Cotabato blasts miss Robredo

Interior Secretary Jesse M. Robredo narrowly avoided being a bomb victim when explosions rocked the main avenue of Cotabato City early Tuesday.

Robredo was en route to a forum featuring candidates for officers-in-charge of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) at the ARMM Complex when two explosives planted 20 meters apart exploded on Sinsuat Avenue.

“We were supposed to take that route in the morning, but we changed routes,” said Robredo, who sounded calm when reached by phone later Tuesday.

No one was hurt in the simultaneous blasts that occurred some 500 meters away from where the ARMM forum was to take place.

“It’s part of the job. There’s no problem. These things shouldn’t stop us from performing our jobs,” Robredo said.

The secretary initially said that the change of route was prompted by heavy traffic in the area but later admitted that he had received a report of a possible security threat about an hour before the blasts occurred.

The warning was in the form of a text message from Director Felicisimo Khu, chief of the Philippine National Police’s Directorate for Integrated Police Operations in Western Mindanao.

Robredo does not believe he was the target of the bomb. “I don’t think so. If we had gone on our original route, I don’t think we would have gotten hit anyway,” he said, adding that he had not increased his security detail.

In an incident report, Khu said the blasts took place at about 12:10 p.m., the first beside the main road, followed “almost simultaneously” by a second in front of the Cotabato City Regional Hospital.

He said Robredo and his party were already inside the ARMM compound when the blasts occurred.