Central Mindanao airport’s anti-terror equipment bogs down

CAMP SIONGCO, Maguindanao — Security forces complained that vital anti-terrorist equipment has been out of order at the Awang airport in Cotabato City despite the terminal’s sensitive location in Central Mindanao, a known hotbed of Islamic extremism in the region.

Members of the police’s Aviation Security Group (ASG) and the Air Transportation Office (ATO) at the Awang airport have complained that they have been manually inspecting bags, luggage and packages of airline passengers after the X-ray machine, that detects weapons and explosive devices, bogged down four months ago.

Antonio Mariano, assistant transportation and communication secretary of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), inspected the defective X-ray machine at the airport the other day and advised the ASG and ATO to coordinate with airport management and immediately fix the X-ray machine to avert any terrorist attack and a possible disaster.

"We have to focus attention on this problem now, rather than sit down, then mourn and be sorry later," said Mariano, a retired Air Force colonel.

Residents and airline passengers are worried that terrorists could penetrate the security personnel at the Awang airport.

In February 2003, several establishments near the airport were destroyed when suspected Muslim rebels detonated a bomb-laden car in front of the airport’s reception building in retaliation for the military’s takeover of the Buliok complex, the last stronghold of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) located at the boundary of Pikit, North Cotabato and Pagalungan, Maguindanao.

In September 1997, two Arab terrorists identified as Mohammad Ibrahim and Ghareb Sayed Ahmed stormed the gate of Camp Siongco, headquarters of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division, less than 30 meters away from the Awang airport. The Arabs hurled grenades and shot the soldiers guarding the entrance to the camp.

The two foreigners, whose exact nationalities were not confirmed, shot dead three soldiers and wounded five others, before responding members of the 6th Infantry Division’s Headquarters Service Battalion gunned them down near the office of then 6th ID commander Maj. Gen. Raul Urgello.

Urgello had blamed the members of the MILF for helping the Arab terrorists plan the attack.

The attack was allegeldy carried out in retaliation for the deaths of 11 Muslim women, mostly teenagers, during an accidental shelling by military units of a dormitory for Madrasah students, near the house of then MILF chairman Hashim Salamat at Buliok complex.

Mariano said he inspected the airport’s X-ray machine after ARMM Gov. Datu Zaldy Ampatuan ordered the monitoring of airport facilities following concerns over the safety of passengers passing through Awang airport.

Ampatuan’s elder brother, Datu Saudi, was killed in a bomb attack, along with 17 others in Datu Piang, Maguindanao on Dec. 23, 2003.