Foreign-trained bomber killed, another nabbed in Maguindanao

MAGUINDANAO, Philippines - Lawmen gunned down a foreign-trained bomb-maker and arrested another in a police operation Friday in Datu Paglas town in the province.

Combined members of the Maguindanao provincial police and the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) tried to peacefully arrest the slain bomber, Nadzir Pakasi Mongkas, and his cashiered cohort, Rahib Pelandoc Guialudin, but both resisted that ended in a a shootout.

A scared Guialudin immediately yielded, hands raised, when he saw Mongkas fell to the ground face down, his body riddled with bullets, after having been shot by policemen when he to tried to pull out a handgun from his waist.

Mongkas and Guialudin were both implicated, along with several other Moro bomb experts, as responsible for the recent spate of bombings of commercial establishments and buses in Central Mindanao.

Mongkas was said to have undergone training in handling of explosives and fabrication of roadside bombs using live mortar rounds, B-40 anti-tank rockets and Ammonium Nitrate fertilizer in Peshawar, Pakistan and in Kandahar, Afghanistan.

Senior Superintendent Rudelio Jocson, director of the Maguindanao provincial police, said Mongkas and Guialudin were intercepted while transporting home-made explosives and bomb-making materials in a secluded stretch of the Tacurong-North Cotabato Highway in Datu Paglas.

Jocson said Muslim religious leaders and local officials tipped the operatives that the duo would be passing through the route riding a multi-cab vehicle bearing license plates MEH 338.

Policemen recovered inside the suspects’ vehicle assorted materials for the fabrication of improvised explosive devices, three home-made .50 caliber Barrett sniper rifles, an M-16 armalite, a Singaporean-made caliber 5.56 assault rifle, two caliber .45 pistols, and a newly assembled IED equipped with a battery-operated blasting device.

Army intelligence sources said Gualudin and Mongkas are also “guns-for-hire” and engaged in “vending” of stolen firearms to warlords and Moro rebel groups.

Jocson said police investigators and intelligence operatives are now trying to extract information from Guialudin to determine their possible involvement in the deadly August 5 car bomb explosion in Cotabato City that killed eight people and injured more than 30 others.