Cops clueless on separate ambush incidents in Central Mindanao

COTABATO CITY, Philippines – Investigators are still clueless on Thursday’s separate ambush incidents in Maguindanao province and in Marawi City that left six dead, two of them Islamic preachers.

Chief Inspector Lendsy Sinsuat of the municipal police in Datu Odin town in Maguindanao on Friday said probers are yet to identify the suspects in the fatal ambush of spouses Mantil and Noraiha Sangkad in Barangay Pinguiaman.

The victims were on their way to Cotabato City, riding a motorcycle together along with their seven-year-old child when gunmen on board a car trailing behind opened fire with handguns, killing them on the spot.

Residents in Barangay Pinguiaman southwest of Datu Odin said the suspects could have trailed the victims from as far as the town proper in Barangay Dalican and attacked at a secluded stretch of the Cotabato-Gen. Santos Highway, along a hill overlooking the Liguasan Delta.

Responding barangay officials immediately took the couple’s beleaguered child, who survived the shooting frenzy unscathed, away from the scene after the suspects sped away.

The Sangkads are both preachers in an Islamic school in Barangay Semba, also in Datu Odin.

“Our investigators are still trying to establish the identities of the culprits. We still have to determine if the incident was triggered by an old grudge, or related to their common profession as preachers,” Sinsuat said.

The fatal ambush of the Sangkads preceded a shooting incident in Barangay Sarimanok in Marawi City, now touted as Mindanao’s shabu capital, which left four people dead.

The fatalities, siblings Junard and Junil Kalagi, Baldwin Romano and tricycle driver Halim Mitomara, died from multiple gunshot wounds sustained in the attack.

The victims were riding a tricycle driven by Mitomara, en route to the Kampo Ranao in Marawi City, when gunmen riding motorcycles overtook and shot them with pistols.

The director of the Lanao del Sur provincial police, Senior Superintendent Agustin Tello, told reporters investigators are still conducting an extensive inquiry on the identities of the suspects and their motive for the attack.

Marawi City has gained notoriety in recent months owing to the glaring unabated operations of drug trafficking groups in the area, which enjoys the protection of unscrupulous barangay leaders and local officials.

Peace advocacy groups, some involved in foreign-assisted peace-building projects, had said about 90 percent of the crimes in Marawi City were perpetrated by drug dependents and people squabbling for control of areas where they circulate shabu.

The sources also confirmed that about half of the more than 90 barangays in Marawi City are now transshipment points for shabu, where traffickers peddle drugs even in the immediate peripheries of supposedly hallowed mosques and Islamic schools.