Secondary IED found near scene of deadly roadside bombing
Mindanao Armed Conflict • 15:00 PM Tue Jan 26, 2021
1
By:
John M. Unson
The larger home-made bomb found near the spot where a smaller one went off, killing a motorist. (Photo courtesy of DXMS Radyo Bida)
Ordnance experts promptly deactivated a more powerful secondary explosive found near the scene of a roadside blast Tuesday in South Upi town that killed a motorist and hurt another.
The improvised explosive device was made of 105 Howitzer cannon round rigged with a blasting mechanism attached to a small 12-volt battery.
A motorist, Alberto Delos Santos, was instantly killed while his companion, Loreto Palma, was seriously hurt when their motorcycle was hit by a roadside bomb while passing by a stretch of a highway straddling through the town proper of South Upi, Maguindanao about 30 minutes before.
Delos Santos died from multiple shrapnel wounds in different parts of his body.
The IED that killed Delos Santos was fashioned from an 81 millimeter mortar projectile packed with nails, detonated from a distance using a mobile phone.
The spot where the roadside bomb exploded is near the local government center of South Upi, where the municipal police station is located.
Brig. Gen. Samuel Rodriguez of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region has ordered the personnel of the South Upi municipal police to identify the bombers for immediate prosecution.
South Upi Mayor Reynalbert Insular has urged his constituent-barangay captains to help the local police and the Army’s 57th Infantry Battalion in their municipality guard against terror attacks.
Insular thrice survived roadside bombings in the past three years in attacks that he believed were perpetrated by his political adversaries.