Two dead in Maguindanao gunfight – BusinessWorld Online
COTABATO CITY — Policemen and soldiers on Saturday arrested seven members of an armed group that figured in a gunfight with a rival partisan faction in Pandag, Maguindanao del Sur, leaving a candidate for municipal councilor and a student dead.
The seven gunmen and their companions first traded shots with personnel of units under the Maguindanao del Sur Provincial Police Office and the Army’s 2nd Mechanized Infantry Battalion who responded to the incident.
Moro community leaders had told reporters on Sunday that the companions of the seven gunmen, now locked in a police detention facility, had escaped towards another barangay, bringing with them their military-type combat weapons.
Officials of the Pandag Municipal Police Station and the Maguindanao Provincial Police Office confirmed to reporters on Sunday that two villagers, Emran Tumbah Mamalinta, a candidate for municipal councilor in Pandag, and a male student, Alkama Kilam Maslama, got killed in the crossfire between the two groups, each identified with feuding local politicians locked in a deep-seated political rivalry.
An old Moro woman, who was hit by stray bullets, was rushed by emergency responders to a hospital for treatment.
Brig. Gen. Romeo J. Macapaz, director of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region, and Army Major Gen. Donald M. Gumiran, commander of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division, said separately that the joint military-police peacekeeping teams seized three M16 rifles, two .30 caliber M1 Garand rifles, an M653 rifle, and an M203 rifle fitted with a 40 millimeter grenade launcher.
Pandag is a far-flung town in the politically hostile Maguindanao del Sur, one of the five provinces in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao. — John Felix M. Unson
