Another Cotabato trader kidnapped

COTABATO CITY Philippines  – Bandits kidnapped a Filipino-Chinese businesswoman here Friday night, the second member of the local Filipino-Chinese business community snatched since January.

Jingky Lim Yap was in her grocery along Sinsuat Avenue when three men barged in and forced her into a waiting car. Witnesses overhead the kidnappers speaking with each other in the Maguindanoan dialect.

City administrator Cynthia Guiani-Sayadi said policemen and members of the Marine Battalion Landing Team 7 found the abandoned getaway car near a rice field somewhere in the Kakar district.

Yap’s abduction came just more than two months after businessman Adin Yu, whose family owns the city’s oldest hardware store and three restaurants at the city’s commercial hub, was kidnapped near a casino.

Yu’s abductors have stopped communicating with his wife, bolstering suspicions that the victim could have died of injuries he sustained when he was kidnapped.

Guiani-Sayadi is appealing to the kidnappers to set Yap free, saying she is not wealthy and merely lives on the earnings of her small roadside store.