MAGUINDANAO, Philippines --- Tension spread anew in Shariff Aguak town Friday night following an attempt by the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters to set off a home-made bomb near a municipal government compound.
Responding military bomb experts managed to promptly defuse the improvised explosive device, fashioned from a live B-40 anti-tank rocket and a Mark II fragmentation grenade rigged with a battery-operated blasting mechanism that can be activated from a distance using a mobile phone.
Col. Jener Del Rosario, commanding officer of the Philippine Army’s 1st Mechanized Brigade, said the IED was packed with fragments of cast iron with jagged edges, mixed with tiny pieces of cut iron bars.
Army and police intelligence sources said the bombing attempt was apparently a retaliation for the military’s capture Friday morning of a BIFF member, Datu Naut Ali Sailila, during a brief encounter in nearby Barangay Sapakan in Rajah Buayan town, also in Maguindanao.
The encounter was preceded by the simultaneous attacks Thursday night by BIFF bandits of military detachments at the border of Maguindanao’s adjoining Datu Saudi and Datu Unsay towns, and the bombardment of the surroundings of the provincial capitol in Shariff Aguak with shoulder-fire 40 MM grenades.
Three BIFF gunmen were reportedly killed when soldiers manning the detachments returned fire with machineguns and shoulder-fire explosive projectiles, forcing them to retreat to a hinterland in southwest of the province.
Lt. Col. Donald Hongitan, commanding officer of the Army’s 45th Infantry Battalion, said soldiers who arrested Sailila also recovered from the encounter scene five M-16 assault rifles and drug sniffing paraphernalia the bandits left as they fled in haste.
Hongitan’s men recovered shabu in the trouser pockets of Sailila, now in the custody of the police.
Rajah Buayan Mayor Zamzamin Ampatuan, chairman of the municipal peace and order council, told reporters there is no existing BIFF camp in any of the barangays under his jurisdiction.
Ampatuan, however, said BIFF members sometimes cross through isolated barangays in Rajah Buayan when they move from one town to another.
Hongitan said the firefight in Barangay Sapakan erupted when some 20 BIFF bandits opened fire on patrolling combatants of the 45th IB dispatched to check the reported presence of gunmen in the area.