Gov't forces secure power facilities amid bomb threats

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — The police and military on Monday placed under tight surveillance power relay towers scattered in Central Mindanao due to mounting threats of attacks by bombers during the holidays.

Gov. Esmael Mangudadatu of Maguindanao and Gov. Emmylou Mendoza of North Cotabato on Monday ordered their constituent-mayors to help authorities secure the steel relay pylons of the National Grid Corporation of the Philippines (NGCP) in the two provinces.

The NGCP towers carry high tension cables connecting towns in Maguindanao and North Cotabato to a state-run hydroelectric plant in Bukidnon province northeast of Mindanao.

Capt. Joann Petinglay, spokesperson of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division, said commanders of military units in the two provinces have enlisted the support of community elders and local clerics in securing the facilities.

Petinglay said the move is in support of the efforts of the two provincial governors and the police in preventing saboteurs from getting close to NGCP towers in far-flung areas.

Gunmen toppled down using improvised bombs an NGCP steel pylon in Maguindanao’s Sultan Kudarat town at midnight on Friday—the seventh bombing of a power relay tower in Central Mindanao in just six months.

The attack, however, did not cause this time any power outage in Cotabato City and surrounding towns in Maguindanao and North Cotabato, component provinces of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao and Administrative Region 12, respectively.

The bombers felled NGCP's Tower 168 in Barangay Ladia in Sultan Kudarat town in Maguindanao with improvised explosives they strapped on its columns, detonated from a distance using mobile phones.

The military and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) are now jointly helping police investigators identify the culprits to hasten their prosecution.

Barangay Ladia is not so far from the MILF's main enclave, Camp Darapanan, in northeast of Sultan Kudarat.

The brigand Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF) had been blamed for the bombings of NCGP towers in the adjoining Maguindanao and North Cotabato provinces in recent months.

The BIFF does not recognize the interim ceasefire pact between the government and MILF.

The group has also been trying to derail the government-MILF peace negotiations by harassing military installations in far-flung areas, attempting to detonate bombs near the locations despite the presence of civilians.

In an advisory, the NGCP said Tower 168 in Barangay Ladia was bombed at 11 p.m. on Friday.

The same tower was felled by bombers more than two years ago.

The bombing of Tower 168 was preceded by the destruction in an earlier attack of NGCP's Tower 68 in Aleosan town in North Cotabato, which caused a 16-hour power outage in many parts of Central Mindanao.