2 Cotabato City chapel blast victims both well now

COTABATO CITY — The two worshippers hurt in Sunday’s bombing of the Sto. Niño Chapel in Purok Bagong Silang in Barangay Rosary Heights, Cotabato City are now well, but the trauma it caused is something they have yet to overcome. 

The injured Marybel Atis, 40, and the 65-year-old Rosita Tubilo were among more than ten Catholics inside the worship site when one of two men riding a motorcycle that pulled over near its entrance door hurled at them a grenade and immediately fled.

A member of the 80-seat Bangsamoro parliament, Susana Salvador Anayatin, told reporters on Wednesday that both blast victims are fine, their shrapnel wounds healing fast.

The office of Anayatin, who is also overseeing on concurrent capacity and the settler communities outfit in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, and her staff provided Atis and Tubilo, financial assistance on Tuesday.

Anayatin, who is Catholic, said she and her subordinates are hoping for an immediate closure to the incident and for the police and military to tighten security in Christian and Muslim worship sites that are easy bombing targets.

“May truth prevail and justice triumph on this atrocity,” Anayatin told reporters on Wednesday.

Two other members of the BARMM parliament, the lawyer Suharto Mastura Ambolodto and the physician-ophthalmologist Kadil Monera Sinolinding Jr., have condemned the Sto. Niño Chapel bombing and called on witnesses to help the police identify its motorcycle-riding perpetrators.

“In the meantime, we should avoid speculating on that incident, an attack on a worship site. Let us not allow that to wedge the relationship of Cotabato City residents with different religions,” Sinolinding said.