ORTH COTABATO – Security forces have disarmed an improvised explosive after it was discovered on a busy road in Pikit town in the southern Philippine province of North Cotabato, officials said Saturday.
Officials said bomb disposal experts from the army’s 7th Infantry Battalion were dispatched to the town to defuse the explosive which was connected to a cell phone by a wire.
The explosive was still wrapped in a packing tape and made to look like a baggage when a civilian spotted it and immediately informed the authorities, according to Capt. Jo-ann Petinglay, a spokesman for the 6th Infantry Division.
“We still do not know who was behind the foiled bombing, but investigation is going on,” Petinglay told the regional newspaper Mindanao Examiner.
A series of explosion late last year also injured and killed scores of civilians in North Cotabato province blamed by the military and police to the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters.
A lone BIFF member also killed three soldiers with the army’s 9th Intelligence Service Unit in the same month in the town of Datu Piang in Maguindanao. The rebel killed an army major and two privates who were travelling in a car. The soldiers also lost their weapons and a laptop to the attacker.
Some 500 BIFF rebels also assaulted the detachment of the 45th Infantry Battalion in the village of Sapakan in Rajah Buayan town. The attack sparked a six-hour firefight that wounded Corporal Charlie Dilangsoy, and another village in North Cotabato’s Midsayap town. (Mindanao Examiner – Mark Navales and Rise Muneza)
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