Fruit vendor dead, 5 hurt in North Cotabato bombing
Mindanao Armed Conflict • 16:30 PM Wed Jan 27, 2021
879
By:
John M. Unson
Emergency responders attend to victims of the roadside bombing in Tulunan, North Cotabato. (Contributed)
NORTH COTABATO --- An ambulant fruit vendor was killed while five others, among them commuters, were hurt in an explosion that hit a bus in Tulunan town at noontime Wednesday.
Col. Henry Villar, director of the North Cotabato provincial police, said investigators and ordnance experts are still sifting through the blast scene.
Vendor Gina Paunan, 53 of Barangay Cajelo, Tulunan succumbed to shrapnel wounds while being rushed to a hospital.
Initial reports reaching the office of North Cotabato Gov. Nancy Catamco indicated that the explosive went off along a stretch of a highway in Barangay Sibsib, Tulunan while a unit of the Yellow Bus with body number 2988 was passing by.
Catamco said her office will provide immediate assistance to the injured Rodel Secur, Kent Sendero, Ryan Panibayo, Eduard Odango and Ritchie Pedroso, now confined in a hospital.
“I condemn this bomb attack. This is an act of terror. My administration shall help the police put closure to this incident,” said Catamco, chairperson of the North Cotabato provincial peace and order council.
The incident was preceded by a roadside bombing in South Upi town in Maguindanao on Tuesday morning that killed a motorist, Alberto Delos Santos, and hurt a companion, Loreto Palma.
They were together on a motorcycle that got hit with a roadside bomb, fashioned from an 81 millimeter mortar projectile, while motoring through a stretch of a highway in the town proper of South Upi.
The spot where the IED exploded is near the office of South Upi Mayor Reynalbert Insular.
Insular, who survived three roadside bomb attacks in the past three years, said he is certain he was the target of the bombers who planted the IED along the highway.
Major Gen. Juvymax Uy, commander of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division, said Wednesday the bombing in South Upi was perpetrated by members of the outlawed Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters.
The group, whose leaders are all wanted for deadly terror attacks, uses the flag of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria as banner.