Kidnapped boy, 4, rescued

DATU ODIN SINSUAT, Maguindanao, Philippines – With the help of residents here, police rescued before dawn yesterday a four-year-old son of a Chinese-Filipino grains trader who was snatched in Cotabato City two weeks ago.

Superintendent Danny Bacas, operations director of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) police, said the boy was reunited with his family after undergoing medical examination following his rescue near the 20-hectare compound of the Maguindanao Electric Cooperative in this town.

The place where the kidnappers abandoned the boy is not far from Camp Siongco, the command base of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division.

Bacas said policemen belonging to the 1507th Mobile Group who are guarding a detachment near the compound of the electric cooperative were tipped off about the presence of armed men holding the child captive there by Muslim villagers.

Bacas said the kidnappers escaped when they noticed the policemen and civilian volunteers proceeding to their hideout.

“They surely avoided a direct confrontation because there were Army detachments nearby and reinforcements could arrive at the scene fast. They decided to leave the child and escape,” Bacas said.

The boy was on his way home from school, along with a companion, last June 25 when he was snatched and dragged into a maroon Kia Pride that proceeded toward a marshy area near Kabuntalan town.

The abductors, believed belonging to the Pentagon kidnap gang operating in Central Mindanao, earlier had demanded P2-million ransom. – With Mike Frialde, Cecille Suerte Felipe and Edith Regalado