ZAMBOANGA CITY (Mindanao Examiner / Aug. 13, 2013) – Philippine police and army bomb experts have briefly stopped a provincial bus from leaving a terminal in Zamboanga City after a K9 unit detected the presence of chemicals in its cargo section during a routine inspection.
Soldiers and policemen secured the area as members of the Explosive Ordnance Disposal team searched the cargo bay and found about a dozen sacks full of soil containing mining waste and by-products.
Its owner told police that he bought the soil from gold miners and would deliver this to Cagayan de Oro City in northern Mindanao. He said the soil may have contained chemicals used by small scale miners.
EOD members said they found no explosives and the bus was allowed to travel.
Police said the chemicals in the mining waste could have triggered the bomb-sniffing dog to react during the inspection.
“The K9 just sat near the cargo section of the bus during the inspection and the dog reacted probably from the chemicals in the soil,” one EOD member told the Mindanao Examiner.
Just recently, the EOD team also inspected a suspicious motorcycle parked inside the compound of a Catholic Church in Zamboanga City, but found no explosives.
In Pagadian City in Zamboanga del Sur, a bag left on a roadside in the business center was disrupted by police bomb experts using water jet on suspicion it contained an improvised explosive. The bag was abandoned in front of Master Hardware along Rizal Street. The bag only yielded an aluminium cooking pot and a pair of slippers.
A suspicious car left for two days at the parking area of Gaisano Mall also in Pagadian also caused a bomb scare and police have to break the windows to be able to search the interior of the vehicle.
Two suspicious bags abandoned in downtown Ipil in Zamboanga Sibugay province were also destroyed by army bomb squad using water jet disruptor. The bags were left at a public square and at the market.
No explosives had been found in both bags, but it also caused panic in the town which was previously pillaged by Abu Sayyaf rebels. (Mindanao Examiner)
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