Explosion jolts comm’l district in N. Cotabato

COTABATO CITY — A powerful explosion rocked a commercial district in Kabacan, North Cotabato Monday night, two days after bomb experts foiled an attempt to bomb the office there of the Land Transportation Office.

North Cotabato Gov. Emmanuel Piñol, chairman of the provincial peace and order council, said while no one was killed or wounded in the bombing, the incident triggered panic among local residents.

Piñol, citing initial feedback by investigators, said the bomb that exploded in front of a bakery owned by a businessman named Crisostomo Baluyot, was fashioned from a mortar projectile rigged with a battery-operated blasting device.

There have been more than 20 bomb explosions in the town proper of Kabacan, a booming agricultural town with mixed Muslim and Christian settlers, since 2000.

Piñol said investigators are now looking into the possibility that a big extortion ring could be behind Monday’s bombing in the area.

Citing initial feedback by their intelligence operatives, Lt. Col. Franklin Del Prado, spokesman of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division, said a lone suspect left the explosive in front of the bakery and hurriedly left.

"Maybe it was meant only at scaring the owner of the bakery because it was already dark and the establishment was already closed when the bomb was there," Del Prado said.

Del Prado said certain businessmen in Kabacan have earlier complained of having received extortion letters from anonymous sources, threatening to bomb their establishments if they refuse to shell out "protection money."

The bombing came two days after Army ordnance operatives promptly defused a live 81 MM mortar round with an improvised blasting mechanism planted in front of the district office of the LTO in a busy area in Kabacan.