MANILA, Philippines – Saying the perpetrators should not go unpunished, Malacañang directed security forces to arrest those responsible for Sunday’s explosion near a church in Cotabato City that left five people killed and 35 others wounded.
Deputy presidential spokesperson Lorelei Fajardo said the Palace “condemns in the strongest terms” the attack, wherein a bomb explosion ripped through a roadside eatery just as Cotabato Archbishop Orlando Quevedo finished reading the Sunday gospel at around 8:40 a.m.
Fajardo said the police and the military were directed to “exhaust all efforts to bring those responsible for this contemptible act to justice.”
“Those who seek to sow terror and chaos (and) destabilize the government and constitutional order will not go unpunished,” she said.
