ZAMBOANGA CITY – Army and police bomb experts disrupted a backpack on suspicion it contained an explosive near a military base in Zamboanga City in southern Philippines, officials said Sunday.
Officials said the bag was discovered by a store owner Alejandra Lumawan in the village of Malagutay and immediately informed authorities about it.
Soldiers and policemen cordoned off the area while bomb experts used projected water disruptor to destroy whatever explosives in the bag.
Disruptors utilize a water projectile shaped charge (an omni-directional format more commonly referred to as a “bottler”) to destroy improvised explosives by severing any detonation cord inside the device, rendering it futile.
Although there was no homemade bomb, the bag contained five 40 millimeter grenades, three fragmentation grenades and a handheld radio transceiver, including ammunition and a pair of short pants, according to Insp. Dahlan Samuddin, a regional police spokesman.
It was unknown whether the bag was owned by a soldier or terrorist, but police are now investigating this to determine its owner.
“A deeper investigation is being conducted by the police in order to determine the identity of the bag owner,” Samuddin said.
The discovery of the bag occurred two weeks following two Abu Sayyaf bomb explosions at a massage parlor and karaoke bar that injured a member of the police bomb squad PO2 Franklin Manuel Ined, Sr.
Ined was inspecting a suspicious container left inside the Deluxe Massage and Karaoke Bar at Tomas Claudio Street in downtown when it went off. A second bomb exploded in the bar.
In October, army and police bomb experts also disrupted an improvised explosive abandoned at the Plaza Pershing also in downtown Zamboanga. The explosive was hidden in a thermos that contained nails and ammonium nitrate, a banned chemical fertilizer widely used by rebels in the manufacture of homemade bombs.
The Abu Sayyaf, blamed by authorities to the spate of bombings and killings in the southern Philippines, has recently pledged allegiance to the jihadist group Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. (Mindanao Examiner)
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