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Sunday, September 18, 2005
Pipe bomb planted at anti-narcotics office
By Ernie N. Olson Jr.
BAGUIO CITY -- Police defused a powerful pipe bomb Saturday outside the office of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) at the basement of the Melvin Jones grandstand at Burnham Park, this city.
The device, set to go off around 7 a.m. Saturday with the explosive capacity of 25 hand grenades, was found by a janitor at the agency, who reported it to authorities, said Senior Superintendent Isagani Nerez, police chief of Baguio City.
"It is really intended for PDEA personnel and we believe it is an organized illegal drug group which set up the device," Nerez said.
"Fortunately for us, it was only a shabbily-made device that may have only been placed there to bluff us," PDEA agents told Sun.Star Saturday.
But Senior Superintendent Isagani Nerez, city police director, discounted the bomb description to be "shabbily-made," saying that if the IED was detonated, PDEA personnel inside the field office could have all been killed.
A spot report from Superintendent Danilo Flordeliza, PDEA regional director in the Cordillera, revealed the IED was discovered by one of their non-uniformed personnel, Narciso Alcaide, at around 3:45 a.m.
"He only suspected it to be a thermos bottle but when he saw a protruding wire with an electrical blasting cap and an improvised timer, this prompted him to pick it up and throw it towards the parade grounds," Flordeliza narrated.
After making sure that the IED was located a safe distance from the PDEA field office, Alcaide sought the assistance of the Baguio City Police Explosives & Ordnance Disposal Team, who immediately responded to the area.
Responding bomb squad personnel carefully defused the IED and transported it to their office for safekeeping and evidentiary purposes.
Anti-drug operations in the northern region have in the past targeted vast marijuana plantations in remote mountain areas and methamphetamine crystals smuggled from China and unloaded at unguarded beaches.
Most bombings in the country have been blamed on al-Qaida-linked Muslim extremists.
Baguio, about 210 kilometers (131 miles), north of Manila, is a popular summer tourist destination. (Sun.Star Baguio/Sunnex)
(September 18, 2005 issue)
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