DENR employees shot, wounded in Cotabato

COTABATO CITY, Philippines - Gunmen shot and wounded the planning officer of the environment department of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao and a co-employee in another daring attack here Friday night, police said.

Investigators identified the victims as Alexar Palawan, an ethnic Maranaw, planning officer of ARMM's Department of Environment and Natural Resources, and Baharudin Baula, now recuperating in a hospital.

The secretary of DENR-ARMM, Kahal Kedtag, condemned the slay attempt on his staff saying it was barbaric and un-Islamic.

Kedtag himself was also seriously wounded in an ambush Cotabato City on June 28, 2006, in what the police had said was apparently related to his work as a senior DENR-ARMM official.

Probers are still clueless on the identity and the real motive of the gunmen who shot and wounded Palawan and Baulu. 

The victims were riding a white Kia car together when the motorcycle-riding suspects trailing behind opened fire with pistols as they came close. 

The suspects sped away even before responding police operatives and barangay watchmen could reach the scene.

The incident was preceded by the near fatal shooting by a still unidentified gunman hours earlier in Barangay Rosary Heights 11 in Cotabato City of 39-year-old A-Jay Naranjo, who works in a warehouse of the National Food Authority.

Naranjo, who was hit below the ear, is confined at a hospital and in critical condition.

Some 300 people have been killed, in one attack after another, in a unending spate of killings in Cotabato City since 2010. About 90 percent of killings remain unsolved.