Trader hurt in Maguindanao grenade attack

MAGUINDANAO, Philippines - A lumber trader was injured when two men riding a motorcycle threw a fragmentation grenade at his mini sawmill in Buluan, Maguindanao before dawn Wednesday, police said.

Reports reaching the office of Gov. Mujiv Hataman of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), chair of the regional peace and order council, said Monzalim Salendab of Lower Siling in Buluan, sustained shrapnel wounds in the body and is now undergoing medication.

Buluan is located in the 2nd district of Maguindanao, a component province of ARMM.

In a report to Hataman, the ARMM police said one of the two bombers riding a motorcycle together that pulled over near the entrance to Salendab’s lumberyard casually alighted and tossed two grenades at the establishment.

Only one of the two explosives went off, according to investigators.

The suspects had sped away before a loud explosion ripped through Salendab’s property.

Inspector Alonto Arobinto, chief of the Buluan municipal police, said investigators are looking into business rivalry or an old grudge, as the possible angles for the grenade attack.

Arobinto said local officials are now helping the municipal police determine the identities of the culprits.