3 dead, 2 hurt in Maguindanao del Sur gun attacks

COTABATO CITY — Three individuals, including a volunteer community watchman, were killed while two others were wounded in gun attacks in three towns in Maguindanao del Sur province within just three days.

A Barangay Peacekeeping Action Team (BPAT) member, Jordan D. Balayman, died from multiple bullet wounds when gunmen in a minivan shot him and his companions while they were on duty near a gasoline station in the town center of Shariff Aguak on Sunday afternoon.

Local executives, among them Shariff Aguak Mayor Akmad B. Ampatuan, and officials of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region told reporters on Monday that the incident left two other BPAT members wounded.

The attackers, who immediately escaped, are now subject of a joint manhunt by operatives from the Shariff Aguak Municipal Police Station and troops from units of the Army’s 601st Infantry Brigade.

Three BPAT members were killed in a spate of gun attacks in different areas in Shariff Aguak in a span of just three weeks prior to the May 12 elections.

Local executives and officials of the Shariff Aguak municipal police force are convinced that the atrocities were related. They are cooperating in identifying the culprits for prosecution.

The deadly incident in Shariff Aguak on Monday was preceded by the fatal ambush on Friday in Pandag, Maguindanao del Sur of a Moro villager, Lakmudin T. Uga, by gunmen whom police investigators and local officials are still trying to identify.

Mr. Uga and his wife were riding a motorcycle together, when they were attacked by gunmen in Barangay Kayaga in Pandag. His wife was wounded in the incident, now recuperating in a hospital.

Two residents were killed, while an old woman was badly wounded in the crossfire between two rival partisan groups, armed with assault rifles and grenade launchers, that clashed in two adjoining barangays in Pandag a week before the May 12 elections.

Mr. Uga’s cousin, Allan, was killed in another ambush on Saturday, near the town center of Buluan, Maguindanao del Sur, which is not too distant from Pandag.

The victim, also a resident of Pandag, was riding a tricycle, bound for the town proper of Buluan, when he was attacked by gunmen, killing him instantly.

Local executives and police officials in Pandag and in Buluan said there is a possibility that the ambush incidents that left the Uga cousins dead were related, possibly triggered by a grudge between them and their killers. — John Felix M. Unson