Bomb attacks cloud revelry in North Cotabato; IPFA blamed

COTABATO CITY — Two powerful bomb attacks perpetrated by the Indigenous People’s Federal Army (IPFA) marred the other day’s town foundation day revelry in Mlang, a historic town in the second district of North Cotabato.

While no one was reported killed or wounded in the bombings, the local folk panicked, prompting Central Mindanao’s police and military authorities to tighten security in the area to prevent a repeat of the twin attacks.

Chief Inspector Jaime Napat, Mlang’s police chief, said the bombs were left just meters away from the municipal gymnasium and exploded one after another while a children’s beauty pageant was being held inside the building.

Napat said they recovered a letter from IPFA in one of the adjoining spots where the bombs exploded, addressed to North Cotabato Gov. Emmanuel Piñol and warning the provincial chief executive of more attacks if he would not focus attention on the plight of his constituents belonging to the so-called indigenous communities.

Napat, citing initial accounts by witnesses, said one of the improvised explosives was placed by a man underneath a pick up of North Cotabato Board Member George Tejada, parked not far away from the entrance gate of the gymnasium.

Responding police and Army bomb experts recovered batteries and broken electrical circuits at the scenes of the blast, indicating that the explosives were rigged with time-delayed blasting mechanisms.

The bombings came exactly 23 days after the obscure IPFA showed force to selected journalists in South Upi, a hinterland town in Maguindanao, where its spokesman, Roger Adamat, called on Malacañang to initiate amendments to the Constitution to allow the creation of separate federal states for the country’s tribal communities, the Christians and the Muslims.

On IPFA’s behalf, Adamat, who has also been using the nom de guerre Adrev, also claimed responsibility for the the bomb scare in different parts of the country early this year, in what he said was only aimed at sending President Arroyo a message that their group exists.

The other day’s bombings in Mlang was preceded by the deactivation by bomb experts of a live 60 MM mortar round which bystanders found along Sousa Street, a busy thoroughfare here.

Captain Ferdinand Escalante, chief of the Army’s 6th Explosives Ordnance Detachment here, said the mortar projectile was half buried in mud and could have exploded had pressure been applied to its blasting component.

Last Sunday, four Muslim villagers, one of them an infant, were seriously wounded when a still unidentified suspect hurled an M-67 fragmentation into their house through an open window in Datu Odin Sinsuat, Maguindanao.