Gunmen blow up power towers in North Cotabato

NORTH COTABATO, Philippines - Gunmen toppled down with improvised explosives two steel power relay pylons in Pikit town southwest of North Cotabato shortly before midnight Friday, causing outage in many parts of Central Mindanao.

The felled towers 44 and 45 of the National Grid Corporation are located at the border of Barangays Dalingaoen and Batulawan in southeast of Pikit, home to mixed Muslim and Christian folks.

Senior Inspector Sindatuk Karim, chief of the Pikit municipal police, said the suspects strapped improvised explosive devices (IEDs) on the columns of the towers and set them off from a distance.

“The towers were blasted at about 11:30 p.m. Thursday,” Karim said.

Lt. Col. Orlando Edralin, commanding officer of the Army’s 7^th Infantry Battalion, said soldiers helping the police investigate on the incident found a live IED near one of the damaged towers, rigged to kill, or maim approaching investigators.

The IED, fashioned from a live 60 millimeter mortar projectile with a blasting mechanism attached to a battery, was safely deactivated by Army and police ordnance experts.

The incident, reported early by Central Mindanao's popular Notre Dame Broadcasting Corporation (NDBC), fanned speculations that the attack was perpetrated by a third group out to sabotage Malacañang’s peace efforts with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).

The NDBC, which has five stations in Central Mindanao, had said in a report that local officials, the police and the military are now helping one another prevent a repeat of the tower bombings.

Barangays Dalingaoen and Batulawan are known bastions of the MILF and are covered by an interim ceasefire accord between the rebel group and the Armed Forces.

The non-aggression security pact enjoins both sides to mutually cooperate in maintaining law and order in potential flashpoint areas and in MILF strongholds in Mindanao.