ILOILO – What should have been a festive program in Igbaras town ended with some 2,000 people nervously leaving the public plaza on Dec. 15.
At dusk of Wednesday, the municipal government of Igbaras officially switched on its plaza Christmas lights display.
At around 6:30 pm., however, as the program was wrapping up, the municipal police station received an intelligence report from the Armed Forces of the Philippines about a security threat – a bomb was supposed to have been planted on the plaza’s grounds and it could explode anytime.
Mayor Jaime Esmeralda was informed about this and he swiftly decided to end the program and tell people to leave the plaza.
The whole plaza was cordoned and yesterday morning a team from the Explosive Ordnance Disposal (EOD) of the Police Regional Office 6 (PRO-6) came over to comb the plaza for hidden explosives.
Bomb-sniffing dogs were used. But no bombs were found. The plaza was declared safe.
Esmeralda wondered who could have concocted the bomb threat and the motive behind it. He did not discount the possibility that it may have been politically motivated or that the New People’s Army was behind it considering the fact that the rebels would be marking the founding anniversary of the Communist Party of the Philippines on Dec. 26./PN
