BARMM police has 28 new bomb disposal operatives 

COTABATO CITY --- The Bangsamoro regional police has 28 more personnel trained in detection of improvised explosive devices using bomb-sniffing dogs.

The new members of the expanded ordnance and explosives detection group of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region are to be deployed in areas where there is presence of the Dawlah Islamiya and the Abu Sayyaf.

The two terror groups have a reputation for bombing commercial establishments, public conveyances and civilian targets if demands for “protection money” are not met, or to avenge deaths of members in clashes with pursuing state security forces. 

Brig. Gen. Eden Ugale, director of PRO-BAR, said Friday the 28 new K9 handlers finished last Tuesday an extensive training on IED detection using bomb-sniffing dogs. 

Ugale declined to name the 28 policemen for security reasons. 

“They are prized targets of terrorists. We have to make sure they don’t become easy targets. With them the capability of terrorists to bomb chosen targets shall get marginalized,” Ugale said.

The 28 new members of PRO-BAR’s bomb detection and disposal contingent were also trained in search of explosives inside vehicles and in luggage of couriers, according to Ugale.

Some of the new K9 handlers shall be deployed in Maguindanao, where there is presence of Dawlah Islamia’s Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters that uses the flag of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria as its banner.

The BIFF is tagged in all deadly bombings in central Mindanao since 2013.

It has members who are experts in fabrication of IEDs, some of them trained by Malaysian terrorist Zulkifli Bin Hir, alias Marwan, who was killed in January 2015 by members of the police’s elite Special Action Force in Mamasapano, Maguindanao.