1 hurt in North Cotabato blast

NORTH COTABATO, Philippines - An ethnic Maguindanaon peasant was wounded in a grenade blast that rocked a roadside village in Aleosan town in North Cotabato late Friday.

The victim, Dante Sultan Atuluganan, who sustained shrapnel wounds in different parts of his body, was rushed by responding policemen and barangay leaders to a hospital.

Atuluganan was riding his motorcycle on his way home when the grenade, planted as a booby trap at one side of a national highway in Barangay Pagangan in Aleosan, exploded while he was passing by.

Investigators are yet to determine who the culprits were and their motive for the bombing.

Relatives of Atuluganan said he has no known enemies and that he was friendly to the Christian and Muslim religious communities in Aleosan and nearby towns.