COTABATO CITY (Sunday, August 24, 2025) — The Army’s 40th Infantry Battalion and the 602nd Infantry Brigade had provided with rice and other food supplies the family of the 25-year-old militiaman killed in a grenade attack on Saturday morning in Barangay Nalapaan in Malidegao town in the Bangsamoro Special Geographic Area in Cotabato province.

Relatives of the slain Citizens Armed Forces Geographical Unit (CAFGU) member, Bimbo Malingco Lumambas, told reporters on Sunday that a team from the 40th IB delivered the relief supplies to his home in Kalacacan in Pikit, Cotabato.

They told reporters that they need the provisions supplied by officials of the 40th IB and their immediate superior, Brig. Gen. Ricky Bunayog of the 602nd Infantry Brigade, for their traditional gatherings following the burial of Lumambas, who was immediately buried according to Islamic tradition of burying the dead within 24 hours after death.

Lumambas, then off-duty, was standing in front of their roadside detachment in Barangay Nalapaan in Malidegao when a man riding a motorcycle pulled over a few meters away and threw a grenade at him.

The culprit immediately motored away as the fragmentation grenade exploded right where Lumambas stood.

Lumambas, who had reportedly planned to join the Philippine Army via an enlistment process, succumbed to serious shrapnel wounds in a hospital where his companions brought him to treatment.

Intelligence operatives of units under the 602nd Infantry Brigade and investigators from the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region and counterparts in the Cotabato Provincial Police Office of the Region 12 police command are cooperating in identifying the perpetrator of the bombing that caused the death of Lumambas.

Barangay Nalapaan, where the CAFGU detachment where Lumambas was assigned is located, is one of the 63 barangays in Cotabato province in Region 12 that got grouped together as the Bangsamoro Special Geographic Area after residents voted in favor of the inclusion of their domains in the core territory of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao via a referendum in 2019.

The 63 contiguous barangays, which originally belonged to different towns in Region 12’s Cotabato province, are now clustered into eight municipalities — Pahamuddin, Kadayangan, Nabalawag, Old Kaabakan, Kapalawan, Malidegao, Tugunan and Ligawasan — that the Bangsamoro parliament created last year via separate enabling measures.

Photo shows the bombing fatality Lumambas and the soldiers who delivered rice and other provisions to his family in Barangay Kalacacan on Saturday afternoon. (By a print journalist based in Cotabato City, Bangsamoro Region)