BIFF blamed for deadly South Upi roadside bombing
Mindanao Armed Conflict • 09:00 AM Wed Jan 27, 2021
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By:
John M. Unson
MAGUINDANAO ---- Authorities have blamed the outlawed Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters as responsible for Tuesday’s roadside bombing in South Upi town that killed a motorist and hurt another.
The fatality, Alberto Delos Santos, died on the spot from multiple shrapnel wounds.
Major Gen. Juvymax Uy, commander of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division, said Wednesday there are strong indications that the roadside bomb attack was pulled off by BIFF members who had repeatedly attacked villages in South Upi, Maguindanao early on.
South Upi Mayor Reynalbert Insular said he is convinced he was the target of the bombers who laid the improvised explosive device that killed Delos Santos and hurt his companion, Loreto Palma, along a highway that straddles through the center of their municipality.
Palma is now confined in the Cotabato Regional Medical Center in Cotabato City.
Insular thrice survived roadside bomb attacks since 2017.
“The 6th ID detests this act of terror. We call on South Upi municipal and barangay leaders to help our troops and the municipal police in guarding their communities from such atrocities,” Uy told reporters via online Messenger.
Delos Santos and Palma were riding together a motorcycle that got hit with a roadside explosive while motoring through a stretch of a highway in the town proper of South Upi, not too distant from its municipal government center which is adjacent to a police station.
The IED used in the attack was fashioned from an 81 millimeter mortar projectile detonated from a distance using a mobile phone.
Responding policemen and soldiers found several minutes later a larger, more powerful secondary IED near the spot where the first home-made bomb was found.
The bomb was made up of a 105 Howitzer cannon round with a blasting contraption attached to a 12-volt battery.