Soldiers found 16 large home-made compact explosives, which can be used as landmines or rigged with blasting devices that can be detonated from a distance using mobile phones, in an operation in Barangay Maan in T’boli, South Cotabato on Wednesday, August 20, 2025.

Army Major Gen. Donald Gumiran, commander of the 6th Infantry Division, said on Thursday, August 21, that it was ethnic T’boli farmers supporting their security operations against the few remaining members of the New People’s Army in T’boli, a hinterland town in South Cotabato, that reported the exact location of the hidden explosives.

Gumiran said the explosives were immediately seized by personnel of their 105th Infantry Battalion, accompanied by tribesmen to Sitio Bagong Silang in Barangay Maan, where they found the explosives left by NPAs who had fled owing to the continuing anti-insurgency operation of the 6th ID in the municipality.

Army Brig. Gen. Michael Santos, commander of the 603rd Infantry Brigade, said similar types of explosives were found in other areas covered by the 105th Battalion in operations, led by its commanding officer, Lt. Col. Erikzen Dacoco, in the past six weeks.

“Those operations were assisted by residents now actively supporting our efforts to weed out the few remaining members of an insurgent group that are for them nothing but terrorists,” Santos said.

The 105th Battalion and other units of the 603rd Brigade, which is under the 6th ID, had secured the surrender, via backchannel dialogues, of 369 NPAs in the adjoining provinces of South Cotabato and Sultan Kudarat in Region 12 in the past 24 months.

Photo shows the large homemade explosives that soldiers seized in an operation in an upland area in T’boli, South Cotabato, now in the custody of an ordnance unit of 6th ID. (August 21, 2025, South Cotabato Region 12)