Bombed power lines cause 3-hour blackout in Cotabato

COTABATO CITY , Philippines  – Renegade Moro rebels toppled down using home-made bombs a power transmission pylon at the boundary of Maguindanao and North Cotabato, plunging a big part of Central Mindanao into darkness for three hours on Monday. Large areas of six provinces were affected by the bombing of the transmission line.

The bombing came just 24 hours after soldiers and policemen foiled,after an hour-long firefight, an attempt by Moro Islamic Liberation Front rebels to take over a power plant in Kalamansig, a coastal town in Sultan Kudarat.

Lt. Col. Jonathan Ponce, civil-military relations chief of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division, said the rebels felled the transmission tower near a stretch of the Davao-Cotabato Highway in Barangay Bulit, a farming district in Kabacan, North Cotabato using improvised explosive devices they separately strapped at the angular columns of the facility.

The facility, owned by the National Transmission Corp., supplies power from the state-run hydroelectric plants in Marawi City to dozens of towns in Maguindanao, North Cotabato and to the 37 barangays in Cotabato City.

Ponce said they have been receiving persistent feedback from local sectors in the adjoining towns of Kabacan and Datu Montawal, Maguindanao that members of the MILF’s Special Operations Group were responsible for the bombing of the 69 KV power transmission tower.

“Obviously it was a sabotage. We know that the MILF has been extorting money from power firms operating in areas where they have members,” Ponce said.

Ponce said the MILF was also behind the recent spate of IED attacks in Cotabato City and in North Cotabato as part of its diversionary maneuver to ease the pressure being exerted by the military on renegade guerilla factions in Maguindanao.

Eid Kabalu, MILF’s spokesman, was quick to refute Ponce’s statement, saying the police and military should investigate first on the bombings to determine the identities of the real culprits.

Ponce said the followers of the recalcitrant MILF Commander Ameril Ombra Kato, chief of the front’s 105th Base Command, have lately been showing force in farming communities in North Cotabato and Maguindanao, collecting revolutionary taxes and taking farm animals of unarmed farmers.

Ponce said Kato has several followers who had undergone foreign training in fabrication of IEDs.

“They have intensified their foraging missions the past weeks. They are gathering food and money to possibly mount another wave of attacks on peaceful communities in Central Mindanao,” Ponce said.

Preceding the bombing of the transmission tower in Kabacan was Sunday’s attack by renegade MILF rebels at the power plant of Kalamansig.

Inspector Celestino Daniel, chief of the Kalamansig police, said a security guard at the power plant, Zaldy Lingaton, was wounded in the ensuing firefight.

Daniel said the same group pounded with B-40 anti-tank rockets the same facility late last year, plunging the entire town into total darkness for almost two months.

Last year, nearly 40 steel towers holding transmission lines were either destroyed or damaged by bomb attacks by Muslim rebels and criminal groups demanding protection money.