Old grudge eyed in Cotabato cockpit attack

COTABATO CITY, Philippines – Police investigators were looking at the possibility that an old grudge may have led to Saturday’s deadly grenade attack on a makeshift cockpit in Aleosan, North Cotabato that killed three and wounded 33 others.

Senior Superintendent Cornelio Salinas, North Cotabato police director, said Fermin Caloquin and Vicente Sabando were both killed on the spot from multiple shrapnel wounds, while farmer Jose Mario de la Peña died late Saturday while being treated for injuries.

Salinas, citing initial reports from the Aleosan police, said the grenade was tossed at the center of a small pitting arena in the middle of a cockfight, where more than a hundred people were gathered.

The makeshift cockpit is located in an open field surrounded by rice farms in Barangay Lawili, a secluded farming district in Aleosan.

Some of those injured in the blast were residents of nearby Barangay Tonganon, also in Aleosan, where several families are locked in violent clan wars, called rido in the Maguindanaon vernacular.

Salinas said investigators were looking into reports that the grenade attack could have something to do with the clan wars in Tonganon.

Text messages have also been circulating purporting that the bombing could have been perpetrated by jihadists preaching against gambling, drinking of liquor, prostitution, and usury.

Barangay Lawili is not far from known enclaves of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).

There has also been a long history of local forces of the MILF and Moro National Liberation Front squabbling for control of strategic patches of arable lands in Barangay Tonganon and in communities near the vast 220,000-hectare Liguasan Delta.

Lt. Col. Roy Galido, commanding officer of the Army’s 40th Infantry Battalion, said their intelligence agents are helping Aleosan policemen identify the people behind the grenade attack.