DAVAO CITY – Four students were killed and at least 10 others were injured early Sunday in a bomb explosion inside a university gymnasium in Marawi City.
Sketchy reports reaching the police regional office of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao had yet to identify the victims as well as the suspects in the bombing.
The report only said investigators confirmed the deaths of four persons and the injuries to 10 others in the explosion of an improvised explosive device inside the Dimaporo Gymnasium in Barangay Dimalna, Mindanao State University campus, some four kilometers west of downtown Marawi City.
The victims were among those attending a 7:00 am mass or prayer session inside the MSU gym.
Photographs of the victims were also posted in various social media networks, showing the dead and the injured. The injured were rushed to the Amai Pakpak Medical Center in Marawi City while bodies of the dead were still at the crime scene for investigation, the police said.
Police Col. Robert S Daculan, Lanao del Sur provincial commander, ordered the area cordoned.
In one Facebook chat group, an MSU alumnus recalled a previous grenade explosion inside the Social Hall of the university, not far from the gym, in 1975 “while an evening concert was going on”.
Image credits: AP/Froilan Gallardo