2 BARMM towns hit by grenade attacks within 12 hours

COTABATO CITY — A male motorist threw a grenade at a roadside Army detachment in Sultan Kudarat, Maguindanao del Norte on Saturday night, barely 12 hours after a similar attack in another Bangsamoro town that injured two soldiers and three civilians.

Local executives in Maguindanao del Norte and Maguindanao del Sur provinces in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao told reporters on Sunday, July 19, that the bombings targeting soldiers appeared to be acts of by remnants of the now-defunct Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters following the death earlier this month of their leader, Esmael Tingan Abubakar, in a shootout with joint police and Army operatives in Sitio Tambak, Barangay Calsada, Sultan Kudarat.

Combined personnel from different units of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region and the Army’s 6th Infantry Division were to serve Abubakar with warrants for his arrest at his hideout in Barangay Calsada, Sultan Kudarat, from different courts where multiple murder, multiple frustrated murder, arson, narcotics trafficking and extortion cases against him were pending, but he resisted and pulled out a gun, provoking a gunfight that caused his death.

No one was hurt in Saturday night's grenade attack at the detachment of the Charlie Company of the Army’s 7th Infantry Battalion along a stretch of the Cotabato-Davao Highway in Barangay Macaguiling in Sultan Kudarat, but the explosion that reverberated through the area caused panic among villagers in nearby houses.

Police Capt. Steffie Salanguit, spokesperson of PRO-BAR, told reporters on Sunday that the motorcycle-riding bomber immediately motored south of Sultan Kudarat town after he throwing a grenade inside the fenced Army detachment, setting off an explosion.

Security camera recordings obtained by investigators from the Sultan Kudarat Municipal Police Station, led by their chief, Lt. Col. Basher Lindo, showed the motorcycle-riding bomber pulling over along the highway and, from there, hurling the grenade toward the 7th IB detachment before escaping while four-wheeled vehicles were passing through.

Two soldiers, Cpl. Jessie Jay Bulanay and Cpl. Arnel Calapan, both from the 4th Scout Ranger Company under the 2nd Scout Ranger Battalion and the civilians John Dave Usman Santiago, Bassir Amban Batong and Pamiya Upam Bulingkig sustained shrapnel wounds in a grenade explosion that ripped through a busy stretch of highway in Barangay Mother Poblacion, Shariff Aguak, Maguindanao del Sur, on Saturday morning, July 18.

Two men riding a motorcycle together perpetrated the bombing, which also recorded by security cameras at nearby business establishments.

One of them threw a grenade at the KM 450 vehicle carrying the soldiers, who were seated at the rear cargo deck, but missed. The grenade landed and exploded on one side of the highway. The two bombers immediately fled and are now subject of a joint police-Army manhunt. 

Army Rangers Bulanay and Calapan, along with the three Moro villagers wounded in the incident, were immediately transported by emergency responders to the Bangsamoro Regional Medical Center in Shariff Aguak tor treatment. 

Army Major Gen. Jose Vladimir Cagara, commander of the 6th Infantry Division, and his immediate-superior, Lt. Gen. Donald Gumiran, who heads the Western Mindanao Command based in Zamboanga City, separately condemned the two grenade attacks that occurred within 12 hours.

Cagara, who also oversees the anti-terror Joint Task Force Central, said military officials based in Maguindanao del Norte and Maguindanao del Sur are helping units of PRO-BAR identify the perpetrators of the two grenade attacks.

Salanguit said local executives and traditional Moro leaders in Shariff Aguak and Sultan Kudarat municipalities are cooperating with police investigators in validating residents' tips that the two bombings were retaliatory attacks carried out by remaining members of the now-defunct BIFF.