Bounty sought for Kidapawan jail attackers

KIDAPAWAN CITY, Philippines – Local sectors wanted North Cotabato Gov. Lala Taliño Mendoza and the city mayor to offer a bounty for the armed men behind Sunday night’s attempt to rescue a detained bandit from the city jail.

Mendoza has asked the police higher-ups to immediately remove Superintendent Chino Mamburam, Kidapawan City police chief, from his post for his failure to impose measures that could have effectively pre-empted the attack.

Three people were killed, one of them a responding Red Cross volunteer, Benny Balmediano, and 16 others were wounded in the attempt by followers of Datucan Samad, armed with assault rifles and B-40 anti-tank rockets, to rescue him from the city jail.

Samad, who is facing cases of multiple murder, highway robbery with homicide, cattle rustling, extortion, and large-scale propagation of marijuana, is known as Commander Lastikman among his followers.

“We have learned that prior to the incident, the city police repeatedly received feedback from patriotic sources and concerned citizens warning of a plan to rescue this Lastikman and yet there was no decisive action taken to prevent it from happening,” Mendoza told reporters.

The Army has deployed dozens of non-uniformed operatives in strategic spots here and in surrounding towns to help the police track down the armed group.

Maj. Gen. Rey Ardo, commander of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division, said intelligence operatives from the 57th Infantry Battalion and the 602nd Infantry Brigade have also been tasked to help the Kidapawan City police identify the attackers to hasten the filing of criminal charges against them.

The armed men scampered toward different directions after they failed to breach the gates of the city jail.

Most of them were seen fleeing toward Barangay Nuwangan here, carrying companions who were wounded when jail personnel and policemen shot it out with them.

Ardo said their efforts to help the police is in close coordination with the office of Maj. Gen. Ariel Bernardo, chairman of the government’s Coordinating Committee on the Cessation of Hostilities, which deals with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

MILF spokesman Von Al-Haq said their guerrillas were not involved in the jail attack and that Samad is not in their roster of members.

Samad has been tagged in the killings of some 30 people in Pikit and surrounding towns.

He and his men have also been implicated in dozens of highway robberies in the past five years along isolated stretches of the Cotabato-Davao Highway.

Chief Inspector Elmer Guevarra of the provincial police’s Criminal Investigation and Detection Team told reporters the attack was well coordinated and carefully planned.

The attackers even used improvised explosives fashioned from live 81-mm mortar projectiles with remote-controlled blasting mechanisms, to divert the authorities’ attention.

Guevarra said the armed men blasted rocket-propelled grenades at the front of the detention facility, but the jail guards engaged them in a firefight, preventing them from closing in.

The armed group fled after sensing that they could not get inside the city jail, but opened fire at buildings and a videoke pub and set off bombs as they escaped.

Some of the armed men wore black Army Ranger combat uniforms and boots.