Plot to bomb Cotabato lodging houses foiled

COTABATO CITY, Philippines  – Members of the Marine Battalion Landing Team 7 (MBLT-7) and the local police foiled on Wednesday night a plot by suspected extremists to bomb lodging houses in this city.

Lt. Col. Dorotheo Jose Jalandoni, commanding officer of MBLT-7, said policemen and Marines, acting on information from barangay officials, found the improvised explosives after an extensive search using bomb-sniffing dogs in one of the rooms of the N.D. Avenue Lodging House.

Authorities said the bombs were apparently hidden there as part of a bigger plot to bomb two lodging houses in the city’s main commercial district.

Jalandoni said the improvised explosives, fashioned from an 81-mm and two 60-mm mortar projectiles rigged with trip wire, were immediately detonated outside the lodging house.

Jalandoni said two handguns were also found in a bag in the same room at N.D. Avenue Lodging House.

Police intelligence sources said they have been receiving persistent but unverified reports that the group behind the bombing plot is composed of newly trained followers of foreign-trained bomber Basit Usman.

Usman was tagged as the mastermind in more than a dozen bombings in public places and buses in Central Mindanao from 2003 to 2009.

Usman, an ethnic Maguindanaon, was said to have undergone training in handling and fabrication of explosives in Kandahar, Afghanistan and Peshawar, Pakistan in the 1990s. – With Roel Pareño, Jaime Laude