Tsinoy trader’s killers hunted down

COTABATO CITY — Elements of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division are still in pursuit of kidnappers who gunned down a Filipino-Chinese merchant in Tacurong City last Tuesday and another group responsible for the abduction-slaying of three vendors in Datu Piang, Maguindanao over the weekend.

Maj. Julieto Ando, 6th ID spokesman, said their intelligence operatives have identified some of those who snatched and killed trader Ang Leong Hao in a bungled kidnapping in Tacurong.

"But we cannot divulge their names yet because there is still an ongoing pursuit operation against them," Ando said.

The 6th Infantry Battalion, which is under 6th ID’s operational control, has sealed off all major arteries connecting Maguindanao and Cotabato City to restrain kidnappers and other lawless elements from roaming the two adjoining areas.

Five heavily armed men snatched Hao in downtown Tacurong and spirited him away aboard a chartered vehicle. They shot him after soldiers chanced on them, wounding one of them in a running gunbattle.

If they were not intercepted, Ando said the kidnappers could have brought Hao to a secluded area in the Liguasan Marsh, at the border of Sultan sa Barongis and S.K. Pendatun towns, both in Maguindanao.

In Datu Piang, a remote municipality in the second district of Maguindanao, plainclothes agents of the Army’s 301st Infantry Brigade are still searching for the body of one of three vendors snatched and executed by still unidentified gunmen.

The bodies of the two other vendors, who remained unidentified, were fished out of a river. Ando said the bodies bore signs that the two men were tortured before they were shot dead at close range.

Meanwhile, soldiers manning the city’s main entry and exit points now use canines trained to detect hidden firearms. — John Unson