Roadside bomb seized in North Cotabato

COTABATO CITY, Philippines – Police and Army bomb disposal operatives promptly defused two powerful roadside bombs found along a stretch of a national highway in Kidapawan City, North Cotabato on Tuesday.

Superintendent Renante Cabico, Kidapawan City police director, said the it was just fortunate that an off duty member of the Citizens Armed Forces Geographical Unit, Leonardo Podadera, found the two improvised explosive device while on his way to his farm.

The IEDs, fashioned from highly-combustible explosive charges and placed inside metal cans and packed with jagged fragments of cast iron, were neatly placed on a grassy side of the highway at the border of barangays Marbel and Mateo in Kidapawan City.

Podadera told investigators he first noticed a trip wire extended across the highway and found out that the contraption led to two cans containing the IEDs.

The New People’s Army has perpetrated more than 20 roadside bombings in Kidapawan City and adjoining towns since January this year.

Podadera immediately reported what he discovered to a nearby detachment of the Army’s 57th Infantry Battalion, which sought the help of the local military's explosives experts in deactivating the bombs. John Unson