Authorities kill hired guns-cum-drug pushers in North Cotabato

NORTH Cotabato, Philippines - Government operatives gunned down two notorious drug traffickers who also doubled as “hired guns” in a shootout in Pikit town on Thursday.

Members of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency and the Army’s 7th Infantry Battalion were forced to engage and neutralize the suspects, Raymund Timan and Titing Alba, when they resisted arrest.

Timan and Alba, both heavily armed, opened fire first on PDEA members and soldiers who surrounded their hideout in Barangay Batulawan to convince them to yield peacefully.

Two PDEA agents, disguised as drug dependents, bought several sachets of Shabu from the suspects shortly before the shootout.

Felimon Ruiz, PDEA’s director for the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, said the raiding team shot Timan and Alba dead when they came out of their hideout and recklessly opened fire at the operatives.

Ruiz said they learned of the drug trafficking activities of the suspects from informants in Maguindanao’s nearby Pagalungan and Montawal towns, both component areas of ARMM.

Ruiz and his men recovered from the scene a .45 pistol, a .38 revolver and one 9mm pistol, an M-16 assault rifle and a fully automatic machine pistol from the suspects' hideout.

Agents also found a live fragmentation grenade from the trouser pocket of Alba.

Ruiz said Timan and Alba, both ethnic Maguindanaons, are also hired killers implicated in high-profile murders in Pikit and surrounding towns.