Mortar found in N. Cotabato

NORTH COTABATO, Philippines - Patrolling policemen on Tuesday found in a strategic spot in Midsayap town a live 81-millimeter mortar projectile and improvised contraptions needed to set it off from a distance.

Residents of Midsayap, near the Liguasan Delta where the brigand Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF) operates, will celebrate their patronal fiesta on Saturday.

The yearly Santo Niño feast in Midsayap is traditionally capped with street dancing parades and various cultural activities attracting thousands of local spectators and tourists from nearby towns in the province.  

Superintendent Reinante Delos Santos, chief of the Midsayap municipal police, said the mortar round, which has an effective blast radius of 30 to 120 meters, was found at a vacant lot at the center of Barangay Poblacion 7.

“Bomb experts immediately disposed the explosive off,” he said.

Delos Santos said probers have initially theorized that the explosive and its blasting mechanism were left at the spot where it was found, to be assembled later for a supposed bomb attack somewhere in Midsayap.

The presence of the bomb materials in Barangay Poblacion 7 in east of Midsayap was discovered two days after soldiers and policemen defused a roadside bomb found by a peasant along a street straddling through a busy area in the town proper of North Cotabato’s Pikit municipality.