Gunmen kidnap resort owner

COTABATO CITY – Unidentified gunmen snatched a Filipino-Hispanic resort owner in nearby Datu Odin Sinsuat, Shariff Kabunsuan the other night, just two weeks after suspected Moro rebels attempted to kidnap a physician here.

Local police and military officials said businessman Boyeh Martinez, a scion of a pioneer Hispanic clan that own vast tracts of seaside coconut plantations in Datu Odin Sinsuat, was abducted at the premises of the Martinez-owned El-Bimbo Resort in Barangay Kusiong in the same town.

An abandoned car was found hours later at an interior village here, but police investigators still cannot say if it was the kidnappers’ getaway vehicle.

Senior Superintendent Willie Dangane, director of the Cotabato City police, said agents have been deployed in the key routes linking Shariff Kabunsuan to the city as part of the effort to restrain the movements of the group that snatched Martinez.

Lt. Col. Julieto Ando, spokesman of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division, said their anti-crime Task Force Tugis is now helping the police determine the identities of the kidnappers that snatched Martinez.

“We can’t say yet if, this early, if this is a case of kidnap-for-ransom because the victim’s family has not confirmed having received any ransom demand from the kidnappers yet,” Ando said.

A sister of Martinez was earlier gunned down by suspected gun-for-hire in a daring attack at a busy spot here.

The police has earlier theorized “land dispute” as one of the possible angles on her murder by a still unidentified gunman.

The abduction of Martinez came just two weeks after the bungled kidnapping here by suspected Moro Islamic Liberation Front guerillas of physician Milagros Yap.

Responding policemen managed to rescue Yap while being spirited away by her abductors, killing one of them. – John Unson