CAMP SIONGCO, Maguindanao – Soldiers of the Army’s 90th Infantry Battalion manning a checkpoint in Datu Odin Sinsuat, Maguindanao intercepted Monday two improvised explosive devices placed inside a bag from a passenger jeepney bound for Cotabato City.
“It was found at the rear portion of Lawin passenger jeep at about 7 a.m.,” said Major Arvin John Encinas, spokesperson of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division.
Soldiers in Barangay Capiton, Datu Odin Sinsuat inspected all vehicles coming into the city from Maguindanao as part of security measures following a series of bombings in Central Mindanao last month.
Encinas said the powerful improvised bomb was fashioned from 81 and 60 mm mortars with mobile phone as trigger mechanism.
According to Amidin Tato, driver of the red Lawin jeepney (MWA-955), someone from the town of Kabuntalan, Maguindanao loaded the bag into the vehicle and told him that somebody would fetch it at the jeepney terminal in the city’s market area in Barangay Poblacion 1, Cotabato City.
Citing intelligence report, Encinas said the IED was manufactured in the marshy villages of Midsayap in North Cotabato, loaded into a motorized boat and transported to Kabuntalan town before it was transferred to the passenger jeepney.
He believes that members of the ISIS-inspired Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF) are involved in the latest attempt to sneak in IEDs into the city.
“The recovered IED has the ‘signature style’ of the BIFF,” Encinas said. The discovery of the IEDs created a monstrous traffic along the section of the Maguindanao highway in Barangay Capiton, situated about a kilometer away from the 6th ID headquarters in Barangay Awang.
The IEDs were safely detonated by personnel of the military’s explosives ordnance disposal unit.
Last July 20, a powerful IED was also found inside a Cotabato-bound passenger van from Datu Saudi Ampatuan.
Its driver claimed someone loaded the bag in the van and paid an amount of PHP100, equivalent to a sitting passenger. Police and Army personnel intercepted the IED at a checkpoint in Barangay Broce, Datu Odin Sinsuat, Maguindanao. (Noel Punzalan and Edwin Fernandez/PNA)
