Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, April 22) — Holy Week this year was “generally peaceful, orderly and uneventful,” the Philippine National Police said Monday.
P/Gen. Oscar Albayalde, PNP chief, said there were no reported major “untoward incidents” apart from petty crimes such as robbery.
“The observance of Holy Week was generally peaceful without any significant untoward incident in the magnitude of a national emergency,” Albayalde said in a media briefing.
However, he noted that 56 people have died and 128 were injured from 88 “isolated incidents,” while 45 people drowned while some died in vehicular crashes.
Earlier, Albayalde said they deployed over 90,000 police officers nationwide to secure the regions. He said there are still more than 24,700 police personnel manning assistance desks along major roads and transport terminals as people go back to Metro Manila from their provinces.
Albayalde said they will step up their intelligence monitoring against possible security threats in the wake of attacks against churchgoers in Sri Lanka that killed over 200 people. He added they do not plan to augment police presence in public areas to avoid causing unnecessary alarm.
“What we do is basically intensification ng intel monitoring. We don’t want to create undue apprehension sa ating mga kababayan [to our fellowmen],” he said.
