COTABATO CITY, Philippines --- A Moro villager was seriously injured in a powerful explosion that ripped through a secluded area in Purok Amirol in Barangay Kalanganan in west of this city on Sunday night, September 13.
Captain Steffie Salanguit, spokesperson of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region, told reporters that the blast victim, Zainodin Sapal Macabuat, was immediately brought by emergency responders to the Cotabato Regional Medical Center (CRMC) in uptown Cotabato City for treatment.
Barangay officials and investigators from the Cotabato City Police Station 4 who responded to the incident had told reporters that Macabuat was standing at one spot in Purok Amirol, waiting for someone, when something landed in front of him and went off.
Probers had initially theorized that the explosive could be a 40 millimeter grenade projectile, or an anti-tank rocket fired from a distance.
Macabuat sustained large wounds in the middle torso, now fighting for his life at the CRMC, some eight kilometers away from the scene of the explosion.
Local executives and officials of the Cotabato City Police Office, which is under PRO-BAR, and counterparts in the Army’s 6th Infantry Division are together validating if the bombing is related, as widely perceived, to the Bangsamoro regional elections on Monday, September 14.
Cotabato City, which has 37 barangays, is the capital of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.
Residents of BARMM are to participate in a parliamentary electoral exercise on Monday, BARMM’s first since its creation in 2019, a product of a longtime peace overture between the government and Mindanao’s Moro communities.
The territory of BARMM covers Maguindanao del Sur, Maguindanao del Norte, Lanao del Sur, Basilan and Tawi-Tawi provinces and the cities of Lamitan, Marawi and Cotabato, where there are known election hotspots and where residents have a strong culture of keeping firearms both for protection from adversaries and as status symbol.