Bomb scare causes heavy traffic on Edsa

A BOMB scare on a bus shut down a portion of the northbound lane of Edsa in Cubao, Quezon City, on Sunday evening, choking traffic for several hours in the area.

The scare began at Shaw Boulevard in Mandaluyong City, when at 7:45 p.m., passengers of a Magic Line Express bus (TXT 498) informed conductor Eduardo de Leon Jr. of a “suspicious black bag” left behind on a seat near the back of the vehicle, a report from the Quezon City Police District’s Criminal Investigation and Detection Unit (CIDU) showed.

The bag, according to De Leon’s account to the police, was brought on board by three men who got on the vehicle in Baclaran, Parañaque City.

They got off at Guadalupe in Makati City.

What made the bag “suspicious” was that it was unzipped and passengers could see what looked like canisters with packaging tape and wires protruding from it.

When De Leon alerted driver Efren Roldan of the find, he stopped the bus in front of a gasoline station at the corner of Edsa and Main Avenue in Cubao, to ask help from policemen in the area.

The bus was evacuated and cordoned off, as the Explosives and Ordnance Disposal unit, led by Senior Insp. Noel Sublay, was called in. In a phone interview on Monday, Sublay confirmed that the bag contained something that “only looked like a bomb.”

“It was just steel canisters, batteries and wires but had no explosive content,” Sublay said.

“It seemed someone just wanted to scare people,” he added.

Over the past week, text messages warning of bombs supposedly to be planted by terrorist groups had been circulating in Metro Manila. Jaymee T. Gamil