Police, military on alert vs child bombers at South Cotabato anniversary

KORONADAL CITY, Philippines  – Police and military operatives are on the lookout for child bombers reportedly being used by the al-Qaida linked Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) to stage bomb attacks while the South Cotabato province is celebrating its 43rd foundation anniversary from July 10 to 18.

South Cotabato police director Senior Supt. Robert Kiunisala told The STAR that based on intelligence reports, the JI would use children 9 to 13 years old as bomb couriers since they would be able to pass through checkpoints easily.

Kiunisala said the terror group would give the children money to bring the improvised explosive devices (IEDs) inside the city and plant it in their target areas.

“Their main targets are malls and other public places,” Kiunisala said in a telephone interview yesterday.

All the programs in line with the celebration of the province’s 43rd foundation anniversary and 10th T’nalak Festival are held in Koronadal, the component city of South Cotabato and the administrative center of the Central Mindanao region.

Three hundred police, army and members of paramilitary groups have earlier been deployed in the city to help secure civilians who will join the province’s celebration.

Kiunisala said he already ordered all his men manning checkpoints not to exempt anyone from body and bag search.

He also instructed police operatives deployed in crowded places to closely watch suspicious persons, including women and children, visible in their designated areas.

Meantime, Sultan Kudarat police director Senior Supt. Benhur Mongao yesterday said there was no bomber arrested in Esperanza town last Saturday, contrary to reports.

Bombing season

An Waray Rep. Florencio “Bem” Noel yesterday said if only government forces did their homework diligently, they could have averted bomb attacks in Mindanao and saved the lives of innocent civilians, because the months of June, July, August and October are usually the start of the “bombing season.”

Noel noted the “pattern” of these attacks, which had been consistent since 2002, where bombers launched their deadly attacks during the second half of the year, shortly after summer and when school begins.

Both the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the Philippine National Police could have relied on their “old pocket calendars or Googled the Internet to preempt when and where the next bombing season will begin, which unfortunately had a bloody start this month,” he said.

“Like the local weatherman anticipating humid weather during summer and predicting deluge of typhoons during the rainy months, government security forces should have marked these months in their calendar as ‘bombing season’,” Noel added.

According to Noel, June and July are the “favorite bombing months” of terrorists.

“Between 2002 and 2009, bomb attacks, successful or duds, have a way of cropping up during the second half of the year and even as early as June.”

He said bomb attacks in the last seven years have an uncanny way of making its deadly presence felt in the months of June, July and August and in the month of October.

“Of these months, June and July are the favorite bombing months of terrorist groups while October is where casualties are many,” Noel revealed. “What’s with these months that force terrorist groups to start detonating bombs?”

From 2002 to 2009, there were three bomb attacks that were launched in June while four bomb attacks were carried out in the month of July.

For this year, the first bombs in Mindanao went off in the last week of June in Tacurong City, which injured scores of people.

Noel said the deadlier ones, however, exploded in the first week of July near a Cathedral in Jolo with at least six people killed, while a subsequent car bomb explosion claimed one fatality in Iligan City.

11-year-old casualty

In Cotabato City, operatives of the Army’s often-criticized Joint Task Force Tugis gunned down an 11-year-old girl and wounded two others during a raid of an alleged hideout of suspected terrorists implicated in the July 5 deadly bombing near the city’s cathedral.

Cotabato City Mayor Muslimin Sema, chairman of the city peace and order council, said the child, a grade five pupil of the Muammad Elementary School at the border of the city and Sultan Kudarat, Maguindanao, and members of her family were asleep in their shanty when the soldiers arrived and, without warning, opened fire.

“The soldiers did not knock on their door, did not search the house properly. They just opened fire,” an emotional Sema told Catholic radio station dxMS here yesterday.

Not a single suspect was arrested in the raid, as the task force ended up attending to the civilians hurt in the incident.

Sema said the slain child’s sibling and father, who were wounded in the incident, were evacuated from the scene by the raiding team.

Another raid on the same day, but initiated by policemen led by the city’s police director Senior Supt. Willie Dangane, near the city proper resulted in the arrest of three suspected followers of Nur Misuari, chairman of one of two dominant factions of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF).

Dangane and his men recovered from the three MNLF members combat uniforms, identification cards, a hand grenade, assorted rifle ammunition, combat boots, and a mortar projectile identical to the one used in the July 5 bombing of an eatery near the Immaculate Conception Cathedral.

“We’re not saying outright that they are the people behind that deadly bombing. It’s up to the court to determine that. We’re building an airtight case against them,” Dangane said.

Four empty white plastic containers were also recovered from the hideout of the suspects, resembling the one where the improvised explosive device used in the bombing near the cathedral was placed by the suspect to conceal the explosive.

Sema, chairman of the other key faction in the MNLF, said the suspects belong to the so-called Mutallah Force, which Misuari organized when he was still governor of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

Sema rued the failure of the military to coordinate with his office on the bungled raid Sunday dawn which resulted in the death of a Muslim girl.–-Ramil Bajo Updated with Delon Porcalla, John Unson, Philippine Star