Arsonists behind burning of USM education building

COTABATO CITY — Investigators have found evidence indicating that the education building of the state-run University of Southern Mindanao (USM) in Kabacan, North Cotabato was deliberately burned down over the weekend.

The attack came two years after still unidentified arsonists torched the main building of the College of Veterinary Medicine inside the university’s supposedly tightly guarded campus.

SFO4 Joe Rendon, Kabacan’s fire chief, said they found improvised devices that could ignite incendiary chemicals in different spots of the gutted education building.

Rendon said he has asked the police to help them identify the people behind the arson.

The USM, which has a 10,000-hectare campus, is locked in deep-seated squabbles involving rival factions of its teaching and non-teaching personnel and blocs of students supporting each of them.

Since the early 1990s, more than a dozen students and university workers have been killed inside the USM campus, which has also been repeatedly rocked by explosions that left several students dead and more than a dozen others injured. — John Unson