Mother, child slain while rafting down Cotabato river

MANILA, Philippines — Gunmen on Tuesday shot dead a 42-year-old mother and her child while on board a watercraft passing through a secluded channel of the Masugod River in the city.

The fatalities, Saimona Dimatingkal, and her daughter, Saada, 4, died on the spot from gunshot wounds.

Dimatingkal’s husband, Zainal, a farmer, survived the attack unscathed.

Some 300 people have been killed since 2010 in one attack after another in different spots in the city. About 90 percent of the killings remain unsolved.

Senior Superintendent Rolen Balquin, director of Cotabato City police, said Dimatingkal and her child were shot by gunmen with assault rifles from one side of the river.

A villager was killed while two others were wounded in a similar attack last month in another river also in the west of the troubled Cotabato City.

Barangay officials said about five men armed with M16 assault rifles were behind the ambush of the Dimatingkals.

Investigators are still clueless on the identities of the assailants and their motive for the attack.

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