The village of Villarica is one of the largest barangays of Midsayap, North Cotabato. It is classified as urban as it stretches the national highway going to Davao and Cotabato. Google Earth
NORTH COTABATO, Philippines (UPDATED) — A powerful explosion ripped through the compound of the National Irrigation Administration (NIA) in Midsayap town in North Cotabato before dawn Wednesday, causing panic among villagers nearby.
Investigators said a still unidentified man hurled a fragmentation grenade into the fenced compound of the NIA office in Barangay Villarica in southwest of Midsayap and left just as the explosive went off.
Responding Army and police ordnance operatives also found a live anti-tank rocket inside the compound.
Bomb experts are still trying to establish if the explosive projectile was fired from a distance using a launcher but failed to explode.
No one was reported hurt in the grenade blast, but responding barangay watchmen and police operatives found a dead man near the NIA compound, gunned down by unidentified suspects.
Villagers confirmed to probers that gunshots rang after the loud explosion.
Superintendent Reinante Delos Reyes, chief of the Midsayap municipal police, said probers still have to determine if the shooting incident was related to the grenade attack.
"Let's give investigators enough time to check on that," he said.
Engineer Noldin Oyod, manager of an irrigation project of NIA for Region 12, told investigators that some employees had received threats prior to the bombing of their office.
Among those who had reportedly received death threats from anonymous sources was NIA-12 regional director Ali Satol.
Satol said the bombing occurred amid an ongoing audit of their coffers by accountants from the Commission on Audit.
The bombing early Wednesday of the NIA office in Barangay Villarica was not a new incident.
A regional director of the agency, Makmod Mending Sr., was killed when a bomber set off a fragmentation grenade inside a mosque in the NIA compound about a decade ago.
More than a dozen worshipers were injured in the attack.
Investigators had ruled it was Mending who was the target of the bombing. The victim was known for his tough stance against corruption in the implementation of costly NIA irrigation projects in Central Mindanao.
http://www.philstar.com/nation/2015/04/08/1441607/north-cotabato-nia-office-bombed
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