Bukidnon students gripped by fear after bombing, shun buses

Students from Central Mindanao University light up candles at the main gate of CMU a day after the deadly bus bombing that killed 11 people and injured 41 others. Authorities said extortion is being eyed as motive in the attack. PHOTO BY BOBBLY LAGSA

MARAMAG, Philippines – After losing their friends and classmates in Tuesday’s bomb attack that tore through a bus of the Rural Transport of Mindanao Inc. (RTMI) here, many students of the Central Mindanao University say they now shun riding buses.

Some of them expressed fear that the perpetrators of the attack, in which 11 were killed and 41 others were injured, would target the school in Musuan in Barangay (village) Dologon.

Joseph Cris Tadeo, a freshman student, said he has decided to go home only once a week and would like to take another mode of transport.

“I am now afraid to get on a bus,” he told the Philippine Daily Inquirer during an ecumenical rally and candle-lighting ceremony at the CMU campus on Wednesday evening.

Clyde Deocampo, another CMU freshman, said what worsened their fear were the text messages that claimed another attack would be staged by the bombers.

“We are afraid now,” Ross Diana, another CMU student, said.

Diana said she lost one of her dearest friends – Mariel Achacoso – in the bombing.

She said she and her sister, Melissa Leah, even sent off Achacoso, who was then going home to Malaybalay City – some 50 kilometers from this town.

Moments later after the ill-fated bus moved and exploded.

“We thought it was just fireworks explosion. We realized that something went wrong when we heard people screaming, some of them coming off the bus and bloodied,” she said.

“She was of strong faith, bubbly and smart, a very bright future could have been waiting for her,” Diana said of Achacoso.

Gov. Jose Maria Zubiri said security has been tightened all over the province and that checkpoints has been put up to screen buses passing by to their final destinations.

Aside from bus inspections – using K9 bomb detectors – he said that passengers would be individually frisked too.

“Anything that is within the law,” he said.

Zubiri maintained that the attack was meant for RMTI.

“We just celebrated our 100 years as a province and — during the month-long celebration where thousands of visitors came — if it was their intention to harm people, they could have done that at that time,” Zubiri said, in an apparent bid to appease and calm down his constituents.

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