2 dead in Sultan Kudarat festival bombing

SULTAN KUDARAT, Philippines — Two were killed while 34 others were injured in a powerful blast that ripped through a street in Isulan town amid a traditional municipal crop harvest thanksgiving festival on Tuesday night.

The fatalities, Leny Dohina Ombrog, 51 and the seven-year-old Devy Shane Alayon, died from shrapnel wounds in different parts of their bodies.

Superintendent Aldrin Gonzalez, spokesman of the Police Regional Office-12, said the victims were among the dozens in a street in Barangay Kalawag, Isulan where residents were commemorating their municipal Hamungaya Festival.

The thanksgiving rite for good harvest is a yearly merry-making event involving local Muslim, Christian and Lumad residents.

Isulan, the capital of Sultan Kudarat, is a booming agricultural town.

Responding police and military investigators said the bombers used an improvised explosive device fashioned from blasting powder packed with fragments of metal with jagged edges and rigged with a blasting mechanism that can be detonated from a distance using a mobile phone.

The IED was placed in a tricycle parked along the street where the victims gathered.

Among the 34 people wounded in the explosion were two soldiers, Sgt. Melchor Capilitan and Sgt. Melchor Hambali, of the Army’s 33rd Infantry Battalion and a member of the Citizens Armed Forces Geographical Unit named John Peranil.

They were in a team dispatched to help the police secure the venue of the Hamungaya Festival.

Local officials are convinced the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters was behind the IED attack.

The group, operating in the fashion of the Islamic State, is known for venting ire on civilians whenever it suffers loses in encounters with government forces.

More than 30 BIFF gunmen were killed in encounters in nearby Maguindanao province with pursuing units of the 6th Infantry Division in the past four months.

Gonzalez said the IED-laden tricycle was parked near a commercial establishment along a busy thoroughfare in Barangay Kalawag.

He said it was just fortunate that a light Army KM-450 truck was parked near the tricycle, reducing the blast wave radius of the IED.

“We have asked local officials, barangay leaders and Army intelligence units in the area to help us identify who the bombers were,” Gonzalez said.

Brig. Gen. Cirilito Sobejana, commander of the 6th Infantry Division, said Wednesday they will help the police identify the culprits for them to be prosecuted for the offense.

He said security in areas in central Mindanao that are vulnerable to bombings, including isolated stretches of highways criss-crossing the region, have been tightened to prevent a repeat of the incident.