Shariff Aguak placed under tight watch

COTABATO CITY, Philippines  --- The police and military tightened security in Shariff Aguak, Maguindanao Sunday to prevent a repeat of the shelling of the town center with 40 MM grenade projectiles and possible bombing attempts following the separate deactivation by soldiers of two powerful bombs found in different spots in the area in just three days.

No one was reported killed or injured in the bombardment of Sitio Malinis at the town proper of Shariff Aguak with three rounds of shoulder-fire grenades. The grenades  were fired from a distance using an M-79 launcher. The incident also caused  panic among villagers.

The three blasts occurred only about three hours before local residents found a bag near a roadside camp of an Army mechanized unit. The bag contained a powerful improvised explosive device, which a responding military bomb disposal team managed to defuse before it could explode. 

A more powerful IED, fashioned from two live 81 MM mortar rigged with a timer set attached to a mobile phone, was also found two days earlier near the entrance to the six-hectare compound housing the local government operations center of Shariff Aguak.

Col. Prudencio Asto, public affairs chief of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division, said the latest IED soldiers defused at Sitio Malinis at the town proper of Shariff Aguak Saturday dawn was made of two 60 MM mortar bombs rigged with a battery-operated blasting device attached to a mobile phone.

Maguindanao Gov. Esmael Mangudadatu, chairman of the provincial peace and order council, said he has ordered the Shariff Aguak municipal police to look into the incidents, whose masterminds remain unknown.

Mangudadatu said the provincial police already deployed more policemen in the surroundings of Shariff Aguak as part of the security efforts meant to protect local villagers.

Asto said the latest IED villagers found was left by unidentified men along a thoroughfare connecting Sitio Malinis to the center of Shariff Aguak where the town’s market and public terminal are located.

“We ought to thank the vigilant people that noticed the bag and immediately reported what they found to the nearest Army outpost,” Asto said.

Police and Army investigators are certain the shelling and the twin attempts to bomb the area with IEDs were related to each other and were perpetrated by only one group.