COTABATO CITY — A villager was killed in a grenade explosion that ripped through a roadside carnival in Barangay Marbel in Matalam town in Cotabato around midnight on Tuesday, December 31.
Col. Gilbert Tuzon, Cotabato provincial police director, told reporters on Wednesday, January 1, that the blast fatality – 32-year-old Romel Presto Cabiso – died in the hospital where emergency responders rushed him for treatment.
Cabiso was standing close to one of the carnival stalls in Sitio Condring in Barangay Marbel, about two meters away from where a fragmentation grenade, hurled by a still unidentified bomber, landed and went off.
The explosion triggered panic among carnival attendees and villagers in nearby houses around.
Matalam Vice Mayor Ralph Ryan Rafael, a senior member of their inter-agency multi-sector municipal peace and order council and Cotabato Gov. Emmylou Taliño-Mendoza separately condemned the incident and called on the police to identify its perpetrator for prosecution.
The two officials immediately provided initial essential support to the family of Cabiso, a resident of Barangay Marbel and assured they would help facilitate his burial.
Taliño-Mendoza, presiding chairperson of the Regional Development Council 12, offered a monetary incentive for informants who can help the police identify those responsible for the grenade attack that killed Cabiso.
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