Cotabato City heightens security after grenade blast

From the Philippine News Agency (Oct 27, 2020): Cotabato City heightens security after grenade blast (By Edwin Fernandez and Noel Punzalan)

Google map of Cotabato City

COTABATO CITY – The city police office has set up additional checkpoints and deployed more policemen on the streets following a grenade explosion at a residential area here on Monday night.

No one was hurt in the incident but has caused panic among residents of San Pablo Village in this city.

“We are still establishing a lead to the incident,” Capt. Rustom Pastolero, city police station 2 chief, said in an interview on Tuesday.

He said witnesses saw two men standing in front of the house of Engr. Sukarno Sulaik, 50, an employee of the Ministry of Public Works and Highways in the Bangsamoro Region in Muslim Mindanao (MPWH-BARMM) and a resident of San Pablo Village, Barangay Rosary Heights 11, before the blast.

“The same witnesses said that at past 6 p.m. the two men hurriedly left the area aboard a motorbike followed by a loud explosion,” Pastolero said.

The grenade landed and exploded near a drainage in front of Sulaik’s home.

Sulaik, who works at MPWH-Maguindanao's first engineering district, told police he has no known enemies and that he is just an ordinary government employee.

Pastolero said bomb experts found the safety lever of the fragmentation grenade near the victim’s home.

As of Monday morning, some 300 additional cops were fielded to strategic sections of the city for law enforcement operations.

Col. Richard Fiesta, city police director, said the 300 new policemen were from the Police Regional Office-BARMM assigned here to augment the existing 250-strong city police office personnel.

“We will also utilize the new cops for our coronavirus disease 2019 checkpoints and security patrols,” Fiesta said in a separate interview Tuesday.

Last week, motorcycle-riding gunmen attempted to kill a male nurse who was driving his car along a busy street here.

After several hours on the same day, a gunman approached a female supervisor at a refreshment store along Sinsuat Avenue and opened fire on the victim who died an hour later at the hospital.

https://www.pna.gov.ph/articles/1119807