Bomb blast near coffee shop hurts cop

COTABATO CITY—A police officer was slightly injured while checking on a reported improvised explosive device near a popular coffee shop here around 9:30 a.m. Friday.

Supt. Roberto Badian, city police chief, identified the police officer as P03 Jose Gomez.

Badian said Gomez had received a report about a bomb placed on the roadside, about 10 meters from Café Florencio, and was checking on its veracity when the explosion took place.

He said as Gomez was nearing the spot the explosive was placed, it suddenly went off.

Badian said Gomez suffered minor shrapnel injury in his left arm.

“The injury was not serious,” he said.

Police investigators, Badian said, had initially suspected that the explosive device was either fashioned from a 60-millimeter mortar shell or ammonium nitrate and may have been remotely detonated.

“It was a very powerful bomb, everything was shaking here, we were stunned,” an air conditioner technician working at a nearby shop said.

Heightened alert

Badian said the police could still not say who planted the bomb there or what the motive could be.

But he admitted that police authorities had been on heightened alert following intelligence information about possible terror attacks here and in other areas.

In Zamboanga City, police authorities said they could still not say if Wednesday night’s explosion and the discovery of two more bombs were related to the military operation in Payao, Zamboanga Sibugay, and Al-Barka in Basilan.

“We cannot declare outright that the explosion was related to the ongoing operation because we are still conducting further investigation,” Senior Supt. Edwin de Ocampo, acting city police chief, said.

One person was killed (not two as Ocampo had earlier said) when an IED went off inside an eatery in Barangay Sangali around 9:15 p.m. while police bomb experts were trying to deactivate another bomb nearby.

A third bomb was also recovered in Sangali on the same night the explosion took place. Edwin Fernandez with reports from Charlie Señase and Julie Alipala, Inquirer Mindanao