Lanao cop killed in ambush

LANAO DEL SUR, Philippines – A policeman was killed while a municipal police chief and another subordinate were badly wounded when drug peddlers shot their vehicle with assault rifles on Tuesday in Picong town in Lanao del Sur.

The fatality, PO1 Rohodin Tahir, died on the spot from multiple bullet wounds.

The attack left Inspector Rudy Bagsingit, chief of the Picong municipal police and PO3 Saidamen Rashid badly wounded.

Responding policemen and soldiers from nearby roadside Army detachments immediately rushed them both to a government hospital in nearby Malabang town, also in Lanao del Sur.

Police probers and Army intelligence agents helping investigate on the ambush incident tagged a wanted drug dealer, Akil Darimbang and his cohorts as behind the atrocity.

Witnesses told investigators more than a dozen drug traffickers belonging to Darimbang’s drug ring were involved in the attack.

The victims were on their way to the town proper of Picong from a law enforcement mission in a remote area on board a patrol car when the ambushers, positioned at one side of a highway in Barangay Maganding in the same town, opened fire with automatic weapons.

Darimbang is one of more than 20 prisoners that heavily-armed members of the Maute terror group sprung from the Lanao del Sur provincial jail in Marawi City last month.

Among the inmates the radical jihadists set free from the provincial penitentiary were eight companions being prosecuted for possession of improvised explosive devices.