Ambush, grenade attack rocks Lamitan City

CAMP SK PENDATUN, Maguindanao - Two incidents - a grenade attack and an ambush that hurt an escort of a senior Moro Islamic Liberation Front leader - rocked Lamitan City, Basilan at dusk Tuesday.

Rajan Abdurahman, deputy base commander the MILF in Basilan, and his aide, Harkie Jawabin Kasain were together in a black Hyundai car, with license plates NCI 2979, that gunmen shot with assault rifles while passing by an unlit stretch of a road in Barangay Colonia in Lamitan City.

Kasain was wounded in the attack, now confined in a hospital in Lamitan City, one of two cities in Basilan that also covers 11 municipalities.

Abdurahman had told probers he has no idea on who could have perpetrated the ambush that he survived unscathed. 

Brig. Gen. John Guyguyon, director of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region, told reporters Wednesday probers from the Lamitan City police force and intelligence agents from the Basilan Provincial Police Office are still trying to identify the culprits.

In a report to the office here of Guyguyon, Lt. Col Arlan Delumpines, chief of the Lamitan City police, said they have requested barangay officials and community elders in Colonia to help put closure to the incident.

While automatic gunfire reverberated through Barangay Colonia, a powerful blast ripped through the residential compound of former Albarka Mayor Mujiv Hassan Jakilan along Santol Drive in Barangay Bato also in Lamitan City.

Albarka is a politically-troubled town in Basilan, where big rival clans pitted candidates for local positions during the May 9, 2022 elections.

Witnesses have told investigators two men riding a motorcycle together were responsible for the bombing.

One of them hurled a grenade inside a still unfinished building in the residential yard of Jakilan and sped away as the explosive went off.

No one was hurt in the bombing but the explosion caused panic among villagers in Barangay Bato, one of more than 40 barangays in Lamitan City.