Suspected Muslim rebels bomb resort in Sultan Kudarat

COTABATO CITY, Philippines – Suspected members of a renegade Moro faction blasted an improvised explosive device in a seaside resort in Lebak, Sultan Kudarat late Sunday afternoon, killing one and wounding three others.

Lt. Col. Jonathan Ponce, spokesman of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division, identified the fatality as Frederick Supillo, 28, who sustained shrapnel wounds all over his body.

Supillo’s wounded companions, Johnny Benson, 22, Limper Padasas, 16, and Ronie Nerosa, 19, were rushed to a hospital at the town proper of Lebak, where they are now undergoing medication.

Ponce said the victims were in a cottage whiling away time when two men, one of them carrying a backpack, occupied a nearby hut and left after several minutes, leaving what witnesses thought was an ordinary luggage.

The IED, which was kept inside the backpack, exploded after the men had left the premises of the Besana Swimming Resort, located at Barangay Tibpuan in Lebak, a coastal town some 130 kilometers southwest of this city.

Ponce said the IED the bombers used was fashioned from a live 81 MM mortar rigged with a time-delayed blasting mechanism.

“Such IED is a known signature weapon of the militant Moro secessionist factions,” Ponce said.

Ponce said local leaders are convinced members of the 104th Base Command of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front perpetrated the attack at the resort in retaliation for the military’s takeover last week of 13 known “launching sites” for guerilla attacks in the towns of Datu Piang and Datu Saudi, both in Maguindanao.

There have been more than a dozen rocket and IED attacks on populated areas in Lebak and the nearby Kalamansig town in the same province since the Aug. 5 aborted signing by the government and MILF panels of the memorandum of agreement on ancestral domain (MOA-AD).

The MOA-AD was the supposed basis for the setting up by the government and the MILF of a Muslim homeland in Southern Philippines.