Maguindanao mayor on 'narco list' killed in police shootout

NORTH COTABATO, Philippines – Lawmen shot dead Friday a mayor in Maguindanao and nine companions for starting a firefight while about to search for drugs in their vehicles in Makilala town in North Cotabato.

The slain mayor, Samsudin Dimaukom of Datu Saudi town in Maguindanao, is among dozens President Rodrigo Duterte had earlier tagged as large-scale traffickers of methamphetamine hydrochloride, most known as “shabu.”

Superintendent Romeo Galgo Jr., spokesman of the Police Regional Office-12 in General Santos City, said anti-narcotics agents were to peacefully stop the convoy of Dimaukom for inspection but were forced to engage them when they opened fire.

Policemen at the scene rushed Dimaukom and his companions to the Makilala Medical Specialist Hospital where they were pronounced all dead on arrival by attending doctors.

Superintendent Bernard Tayong of the North Cotabato provincial police said the anti-narcotics operation that resulted in the deaths of Dimaukom and his men was carried out based on a tip from confidential informants purporting they were to bring a big volume of shabu to Maguindanao from Davao City.

Dimaukom and his men, on board three vehicles, were bound for Maguindanao province from Davao City when policemen tried to stop them for inspection at a stretch of the Cotabato-Davao Highway in Barangay Old Bulatukan northwest of Makilala early Friday.

“The operation was carried out properly. They were only to be inspected for drugs but they refused and shot the team that was to search their vehicles,” Galgo said.

Galgo said the PRO-12 will issue a final official statement on the incident after collating reports from the police units involved in the operation.

Dimaukom was in his second term as mayor of Datu Saudi in the second district of Maguindanao. The municipality is a known hotbed of Islamic militancy, where forces of the outlawed Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters are operating with impunity.

The municipality was named after Datu Saudi, son of former Maguindanao Gov. Datu Andal Ampatuan Sr., the alleged mastermind in the now infamous Nov. 23, 2009 “Maguindanao massacre,” which shook the nation to its core.

Datu Saudi and more than ten of his security escorts were killed in a roadside bombing in Datu Piang, Maguindanao on Dec. 23, 2003, while mayor of the same town then.