Police
authorities are eyeing extortion behind a grenade explosion on Monday evening
in front of an office of a mining firm based in Kiamba town in Sarangani Province
Senior
Inspector Luis Pedrio, Kiamba police chief, said Tuesday the explosion occurred
at around 7 p.m. inside the compound of the Kiamba Mining Corporation (KMC)
located along Mondragon Street
Citing
accounts from several witnesses, he said the grenade was hurled by one of two
unidentified motorcycle-riding suspects who passed by the area.
Pedrio
said investigators recovered from the scene the pin of the hand grenade that
was lobbed by the suspects.
He
said no one was hurt and no major damages were reported as a result of the
attack, which came about two weeks after the company received an extortion
letter from an undisclosed group.
He
said they are currently digging deeper into the extortion angle but said they
are not also discounting other possible motives.
Several
local groups have been opposing the operations of KMC and moves for the
conversion of portions of the area’s public forest/ancestral lands/watershed”
into mining areas.
In
June 2010, the government issued a Mineral Production Sharing Agreement (MPSA)
to the Cebu City-based Hard Rock Mineral Trading Inc. for a mining area
covering 8,331 hectares in Kiamba towm.
MPSA-350-10-XII,
which will expire in 2035, specifically noted deposits of gold, silver and iron
within the identified tenement area.
The
Coalition of Organizations to Save Kiamba Rainforest and the Natives
Organization Worldwide opposed the proposed mining operations in the area,
stressing it would eventually destroy the area’s rainforests and watersheds.
http://www.pna.gov.ph/index.php?idn=2&sid=&nid=2&rid=671889
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