Barangay chairman hopeful killed in Lanao Sur ambush

COTABATO CITY — Gunmen killed in an ambush a candidate for chairman of an interior barangay in Kapatagan, Lanao del Sur on Wednesday morning, an attack that left his spouse and their son badly wounded.

Col. Robert S. Daculan, Lanao del Sur provincial police director, said that the fatality, Kamar Bilao Bansil, died on the spot from multiple bullet wounds when gunmen positioned along a road in Barangay Sigayan in Kapatagan shot their vehicle with assault rifles.

Bansil’s wife, Jasmin, and son, Manmo, who sustained gunshot wounds in different parts of their bodies, were immediately rushed to a hospital by policemen and emergency responders from the Kapatagan local government unit.

Daculan said that the victims were together in a white multicab utility vehicle, on their way to somewhere, when they were attacked by men led by Pabil Pagrangan, husband of the barangay chairwoman of Sigayan, whose reelection bid Bansil was supposed to contest as an independent candidate.

The police director said that witnesses have reported to the Kapatagan Municipal Police Station Pagrangan’s direct involvement in the atrocity.

Daculan said local officials and personnel of the Kapatagan MPS are together searching for Pagrangan and his accomplices, who had escaped towards different directions.