Special body sought to probe attacks vs Maguindanao teachers

COTABATO CITY, Philippines  --- Officials on Tuesday urged the police to create a special group to probe the murder of three teachers in Maguindanao in a spate of still unresolved attacks that began shortly before the May 13 elections.

Lawyer Jamar Kulayan, regional education secretary of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, described the incidents as alarming.

Kulayan was referring to the brutal killings before the May 13 polls of the head teacher of a public school in Sultan Mastura town in Maguindanao, and Abas Minso, the district supervisor of the Gen, S.K. Pendatun town in the first district of the province.

Minso’s successor, teacher Lilian Pendatun, who took over on a caretaker basis, was ambushed last week by unidentified suspects armed with assault rifles. She died in a hospital four days later.

A suspected hired killer also shot and wounded a public school teacher in Talayan town, also in the second district of Maguindanao last Friday.

Kulayan said ARMM Gov. Mujiv Hataman has ordered the region’s police director, Chief Supt. Noel Delos Reyes, to initiate measures to solve the murder cases.

Meanwhile, investigators are still clueless on who the gunman who shot and  wounded also last week Cynthia Alpas, the human resources director of the University of Southern Mindanao University in Kabacan, North Cotabato.

Alpas was alighting from her vehicle near her residence in Matalam, also in North Cotabato, when a gunman casually approached and shot her with a .45 caliber handgun, hitting her arm and thigh.

The gunman fled after sensing that responding barangay watchmen were approaching.  Alpas is now undergoing medication at a hospital.

Senior Inspector Elias Dandan, chief of the Matalam municipal police, said investigators have yet to determine if the attempt to kill Alpas could be work-related.- John Unson