Bomb planted under bridge, near Army outpost in Cotabato City

COTABATO CITY — Police bomb experts on Monday detonated an improvised explosive device (IED) planted under a major bridge here, hours after a powerful IED exploded in Maguindanao town.

Senior Insp. Rustum Pastolero, police station 3 chief, said the IED, composed of black powder with cut nails as shrapnel and a mobile phone as triggering device, was found at about 8 p.m. under the Tamontaka Bridge, two hours after a similar bomb went off in Talayan, Maguindanao.

The Tamontaka bridge connect the city by land to Maguindanao and General Santos City.

”It was planted under the bridge, near the police and Army outpost at the approach of Tamontaka Bridge,” Pastolero said.

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Upon seeing the device, bomb experts immediately cordoned off the area and detonated the IED that experts described as powerful and could cause the collapse of the bridge, the lone link of Cotabato City to Maguindanao and Cotabato airport.

”Obviously, the IED was intended for police and soldiers,” Pastolero said when asked why it was placed under the bridge’s approach.  He said the police and Army Special Forces detachment is located at the approach of Tamontaka bridge.

Two hours earlier, a powerful IED exploded at the gate of the town hall in Talayan, Maguindanao. Nobody was hurt and caused minor damage to the sentry gate.

Colonel Roberto Sarmiento, commander of the 19th Infantry Battalion, said unidentified men planted the IED at the gate apparently to cause injuries, even death, to local officials coming out of the government facility.

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”Luckily, it was set off at a time nobody was near the gate,” he told reporters.  The IED went off at 6 p.m.

”It was the handiwork of groups or individuals who are against the government,” Sarmiento said when asked who could be behind the attempt.

It was not clear if the Talayan bombing was connected to the attempt to set off IED at the Tamontaka Bridge here.

The IEDs had similar make – black powder, cut nails as shrapnel and mobile phone as triggering device, Pastolero said.

But the Army’s intelligence community said the twin bombings could be a “baptism of fire” for new recruits of the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF) to avenge the death of their colleagues in last week’s military air and ground assaults in Maguindanao.

At least 21 suspected BIFF were killed, including an unidentified foreign bomb-making expert, when the Army launched offensives in Datu Salibo, Maguindanao, the BIFF’s stronghold. CBB