Cops: Grenade blasts not linked to massacre commemoration

COTABATO CITY, Philippines  – The two grenade attacks that rocked Central Mindanao Wednesday night and killed four and wounded 12 others were not related to the commemoration that day of the second anniversary of the Maguindanao massacre, officials said.

The bombings came just hours after thousands commemorated in the Salman area in Ampatuan, Maguindanao the anniversary of the Nov. 23, 2009 killing of 58 people in the area by armed men allegedly identified with the Ampatuan family.

Two were injured in one of the grenade attacks, identified as Glen Meterio, 31, and Ricky Casador, 41. They were whiling away their time near the gate of the Isabela National High School in Tacurong City when one of two men riding a motorcycle hurled at a grenade at them.

Chief Superintendent Felicisimo Khu, of the Directorate for Integrated Police Operations in Southwestern Mindanao, said an old grudge could be behind the attack.

“It had nothing to do with the commemoration of the second anniversary of the Maguindanao massacre,” Khu said.

Tacurong City is administratively under Sultan Kudarat province whose governor, Suharto Mangudadatu, is a cousin of Maguindanao Gov. Esmael Mangudadatu.

The incident was preceded by a grenade attack in Barangay Nalin in Midsayap, North Cotabato, which left four people dead, including an eight-year-old child, and wounded 10 others.

Maj. Gen. Rey Ardo, commander of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division, said the attack was also perpetrated by motorcycle-riding men.

Ardo, citing reports by Army units in Midsayap town, some 40 kilometers north of the 6th ID’s Camp Siongco here, said one of the attackers tossed a grenade through an open window into the house of Dina Madrigal in Barangay Nalin and hurriedly left. 

The blast killed in the spot 60-year-old farmer Hilario Villaflor, while three others, John Lloyd Ansa, eight; Eric John Quirol, 12; Isidro Awa Sr., 42, died in a hospital while being treated of their shrapnel wounds, Ardo said.

Superintendent Franklin Anito, Midsayap police chief, said those wounded are now confined in different hospitals.

Anito identified the wounded villagers as Rhoda Mae Sela, 19; Isidro Awa Jr., 14; Fransbeth Ansa, eight; Dina Madrigal, 57; Sofia Ansa, five; Haydee Paraqueles, 12; Isidro Gisalan Awa, 42; Marvin Bayo, 22; Louie Baran, 22; and his child Rhena Mae, three.

The victims were watching a TV show when the explosion ripped through Madrigal’s house.

Both Ardo and Anito said the incidents were not in any way related to the second anniversary of the Maguindanao massacre.

Anito said a tricycle driver also found a bag containing an improvised explosive in his vehicle while in another barangay, also in Midsayap town.      

The bomb, fashioned from a live 81-mm round attached to a battery-operated blasting mechanism rigged with a mobile phone, was promptly defused by responding Army bomb experts.

– With Jaime Laude