Cops near North Cotabato church likely the target of blast, police say

NORTH COTABATO — Local officials on Sunday urged residents of Midsayap town to help probers identify the culprits in the bombing near a Catholic church late Saturday, Christmas eve, that hurt 16 people.

North Cotabato's acting governor, Shirlyn Macasarte, condemned the attack and asked the provincial police to file an ait-tight  criminal case against those responsible once identified.

The Midsayap municipal disaster risk reduction and management council confirmed on Sunday morning that 16 people were hurt in the explosion.

Police Superintendent Bernard Tayong, chief of the Midsayap municipal police, said there are indications that the target of the bombing were policemen positioned near a Catholic church where a nighttime traditional Christmas nativity Mass was being held.

Sources from the Midsayap municipal peace and order council said immediately after the incident that the target of the grenade attack was a police pick-up truck parked near the entrance of the church.

The grenade, hurled from a distance by one of two men riding a motorcycle together, landed on the vehicle's hood and fell on the concrete pavement before going off, hurting 16 people.

The blast disrupted an ongoing mass by Fr. Jay Virador of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate congregation.

The victims, SPO4 Johnny Caballero, Roger Pedrosa, Ronald Celis, Chesser Rosete, Jofer Asis, Arnel Silvano, Jenelyn Silvano, Ejimar Loquiz, Princess Capunday, Jessa Mae Banlawi, Little Joy Singco, Jonel Orquiola, Kent Steven Pacquiao, Arissen Bagot and Ronald Duga, were immediately rushed to different hospitals by responding policemen and barangay officials.

Tayong said they have enlisted the help of barangay chairmen in Midsayap in identifying the group behind the bombing.

Retaliation?

Army intelligence sources said the attack could be in retaliation for the arrest in Barira town in Maguindanao last Thursday of five members of the Maute terror group.

One of the five arrested terrorists, a former policeman named Jessy Vincent Original, had confessed to his involvement in the September 2 bombing in Davao City that left 15 dead and injured more than 60 others.

The five Maute extremists were intercepted by policemen and personnel of the Army's 37th Infantry Battalion while searching for a secluded area in Barira where they could hide six vehicles they planned to rig with improvised explosive devices.

The Midsayap municipal police has been on heightened alert since early this month owing to threats of possible bombings by the Maute group and its ally, the outlawed Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF).

The Maute group is based in hinterland towns in the first district of Lanao del Sur while the BIFF operates in the second district of Maguindanao and nearby towns in North Cotabato.

The two extremist groups boast of allegiance to the Independent State of Iraq and Syria and are using the black ISIS flag their common revolutionary banners.

Local officials are also not discounting the possibility that BIFF bandits and rogue Moro commanders involved in large-scale distribution of methamphetamine hydrochloride (shabu) in Midsayap were behind the grenade attack.

The police and the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency had earlier driven away from Midsayap more than a dozen drug-peddling gangs, among them the groups led by Mokz Masgal and Renz Tukuran.

Masgal and Tukuran, both ethnic Maguindanaons, led heavily armed groups that distributed shabu in remote villages in Midsayap and in nearby Aleosan town also in the first district of North Cotabato.