Grenade explodes near Comelec office in North Cotabato town

NORTH COTABATO, Philippines - Another powerful explosion rocked Kabacan town in the province before dawn on Monday, the second bombing in the area since Friday night.

Investigators said a 40MM shoulder-fire grenade fired from a distance landed and exploded behind the office of the Commission on Elections near the mayor’s office in the town proper of Kabacan at around 4:05 a.m.

No one was reported killed or injured in the bombing, but the incident triggered panic among villagers in the surroundings of the Kabacan Comelec municipal office.

Kabacan Mayor Herlo Guzman, Jr., chairman of the municipal peace and order council, said he is certain that the 40MM projectile was aimed at his office where he sleeps, but fell short of its range and landed behind the building.

“I sleep in my office very frequently, especially when we’re on a security alert, or when there are calamities that affect our town such as floods,” Guzman told reporters.

Unidentified gunmen fired on Friday night the same type of explosive projectile on the roof of a house of a militiaman named Edwin Antolin in Kabacan town.

Antolin, his son nine-year-old son and in-laws -- Benjamin and Luz Ferrer -- wounded. They are now undergoing medication at a local dispensary.

A powerful improvised explosive device, fashioned from a 60 MM mortar projectile, also exploded Sunday morning in a cornfield in Barangay Baliki in Midsayap, also in North Cotabato.

Superintendent Reynante delos Santos, chief of the Midsayap municipal police, said they are still investigating whether the bomb was indeed planted in the cornfield and if it was meant to scare the farmers.

Five days earlier, unidentified men planted and exploded a powerful bomb in front of money remittance firm MLhuillier along a busy street in Midsayap.