Two suspects held in Sultan Kudarat bomb explosion

COTABATO CITY — Lawmen are now in custody of two of four suspected extremists responsible for Saturday’s bombing in nearby Tacurong City that left two siblings dead.

Chief Inspector Raul Supiter, acting Tacurong City police chief, said the suspects, Toto Abas Dondi, 39, and Manalos Serad Sallipudin, 20, were apprehended by policemen, civilian volunteers and barangay officials at a checkpoint while reportedly attempting to flee to Buluan, Maguindanao on board a motorbike just minutes after the blast.

Supiter described the explosive as something new, having been fashioned from highly combustible powder placed in the cells of a 17-plate common car battery.

"(The two suspects) were immediately brought to the police station after they were cornered while escaping. They were positively identified by witnesses as the duo who brought the bomb to a car battery repair shop," Supiter told The STAR.

Police said the suspects and two other men brought the "battery bomb" to the automotive electrical shop of Teresita Cabaguing in a busy spot in Tacurong City.

Probers said Dondi and Sallipudin hastily left after seeing that an unsuspecting worker of the shop had clamped the positive and negative terminals of the car battery to the charging cords of a DC power supply.

"In less than a minute, the battery exploded. The blast was so strong that it was heard two barangays away and left a big crater on the floor of the shop," Supiter said.

Two of Cabaguing’s children, Chris Ian, 16, and Rose Eden, 34, were killed in the explosion. Two others, Alma Vidal and Boyet Cabaguing, were injured.

Officials in Tacurong City and Buluan, a hostile town in the second district of Maguindanao, are convinced that the bombing could be a test mission.

"The bomb used in the attack was something new. They could have carried out the bombing to test their strange explosive," said one official, who asked not to be identified.

Muslim religious leaders in Tacurong City and surrounding towns suspect that the bombing suspects are members of a special operations group of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).

Meanwhile, police investigators still have no solid clues on who were behind the bombing, also on Saturday, in Parang, Maguindanao, which left the town’s mayor, Vivencio Bataga, and eight other people injured.

The Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao police, whose regional headquarters are not far away from the spot where the bomb went off, said an improvised explosive, fashioned from a live 81 mm mortar projectile, and not a fragmentation grenade as earlier reported, was used in the bombing.

Bataga, accompanied by his security escorts and municipal employees, was personally supervising the demolition of illegal vending stalls in the vicinity of a public transport terminal when the bomb went off just meters away from where he stood.

Besides Bataga, two of his bodyguards and six bystanders were injured.

Police intelligence sources said they are certain that the bombing was meant to kill Bataga, who is known for his hardline policy in dealing with local criminals and in enforcing municipal ordinances.

It was the second explosion in Parang in less than a week. Last Thursday, an improvised bomb went off at a gasoline station not far from the town proper. At least five people were injured. — With Christina Mendez