Bayan Muna leader slain in Misamis

CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY – Seven gunmen killed the Misamis Oriental chairman of the left-wing Bayan Muna party-list group inside his residence in Salay town Thursday night, police said.

Senior Superintendent Danilo Pelisco, provincial police director, said the armed men barged inside the house of Dalmacio Gandinao at about 7 p.m. as his family was having supper.

It was not known if other members of Gandinao’s family were wounded in the attack.

Police were still clueless on the killing, which occurred shortly before the arrival on Saturday of the UN High Commission on Human Rights’ special rapporteur on extrajudicial killings, Philip Alston, to investigate political murders in the Philippines.

Karapatan, a non-government group that monitors murders of leftist political figures, says more than 830 political activists, human rights workers, trade union officials, lawyers and judges have been murdered throughout the country since President Arroyo came to power in 2001.

Last month Arroyo received a report by an independent commission, headed by former Supreme Court Justice Jose Melo, on the killings. – With AFP