Grenade thrower in NCotabato school blast still unidentified

NORTH COTABATO, Philippines - The police are still facing a blank wall on Sunday’s arson and grenade attacks inside a government-owned school in Arakan town that injured 26 people, including firemen and responding police officers.

Chief Inspector Rolly Oranza, who is in charge of the Arakan municipal police, said investigators are still trying to identify who could have set off the grenade while students, barangay officials, and firemen were trying to put off a fire that hit a dormitory in the Cotabato Foundation College Science and Technology (CFCST) in Barangay Doroluman.

Oranza said government bomb experts have determined that a fragmentation grenade, not an improvised explosive device, was used in the bombing.

Oranza said they have enlisted the help of barangay officials in identifying the culprits.

He said investigators are certain that the grenade throwers could be the same persons responsible in the burning of the dormitory.

Oranza said the grenade used in the attack was hurled near the fire truck parked near the burning building.

An improvised explosive device was found last year at the CFCST campus, which was promptly defused by responding Army and police bomb disposal operatives.

Certain school officials are reportedly squabbling for the presidency of the state-run CFCST.

North Cotabato Gov. Emmylou Taliño-Mendoza, chairperson of the inter-agency provincial peace and order council, said her office will help in the medication of the blast victims, now confined in different hospitals.

Mendoza has branded the bombing as a “diabolic act.”

Oranza said the local government unit of Arakan is now helping investigate on the incident.