11 injured in twin North Cotabato grenade blasts

COTABATO CITY – Eleven people, including a policeman, were wounded in separate grenade explosions that rocked a residential area here and a remote village in Arakan, North Cotabato yesterday.

The suspect in the Arakan blast, Christopher Rojo Musota, 26, was nabbed by responding policemen and civilian volunteers while trying to escape after he tossed a grenade at a group of villagers celebrating their fiesta in Barangay Gambudes.

Nine people were wounded in the explosion and rushed to different hospitals in the province.

North Cotabato Gov. Jesus Sacdalan said a drunken Musota figured in a verbal tussle with a group engaged in a drinking spree near the barangay hall. He then went home and returned to the scene carrying two grenades.

Musota hurled one of the grenades at the group, ran away, and threw the second grenade in a fishpond near the barangay hall.

Sacdalan ordered the police to immediately file charges against Musota.      

The Arakan bombing was immediately followed by another grenade blast in a residential compound here, which left a policeman, SPO1 Julius Perez, and his wife, Gemma, wounded.

Senior Inspector Wally Kasuyo, spokesman of the Cotabato City police, said the Perezes were inside their house when a grenade was thrown at them through an open window.

“The (grenade thrower) escaped even before responding policemen could reach the scene. We are quite sure personal motives (were behind) the bombing,” he said.

Kasuyo said elements of the Army’s 6th Ordnance Battalion recovered fragments of a Russian-made grenade from the scene.