Police, Army tighten security in Cotabato City after three deadly ambushes

COTABATO CITY  — The Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region has deployed additional quick reaction teams to prevent a repeat of the three deadly gun attacks that occurred in three barangays in Cotabato City within just two days.

A police corporal riding a motorcycle survived an ambush with only a superficial wound on a busy thoroughfare in this city on Sunday, July 12. However, a tricycle driver at the scene was struck by stray bullets and killed.

The slain tricycle driver, Basir Madsid Gapor, and his male adolescent passenger, who was wounded in the attack and whose identity was withheld by police because he is a minor, had no known enemies, according to their relatives and community leaders in the barangays where they live.

Col. Jibin Bongcayao, director of the Cotabato City Police Office, and Capt. Steffie Salanguit, spokesperson for the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region, separately told reporters on Monday, July 13, that Cpl. Titing Kauring and Gapor’s passenger, a high school student, who were both wounded in the attack, are now in stable condition.

Kauring, who was off duty and riding a motorcycle, was on his way to an undisclosed destination and trailing behind Gapor’s tricycle when gunmen opened fire along Jose Lim Sr. Street in Barangay Poblacion 5, Cotabato City. The assailants immediately fled on a getaway motorcycle.

Gapor was declared dead on arrival by doctors at a hospital where civilian emergency responders and policemen brought him for treatment.

The incident was preceded by separate similar attacks, within a span of only seven hours last Saturday, July 11, in two other barangays in Cotabato City that left two men riding a motorcycle together and another motorist, a Moro engineer, dead.

Ibrahim Miya and Aldren Karisio Keda were on their way somewhere when they were ambushed before dawn Saturday in Barangay Rosary Heights 11, Cotabato City, by men armed with pistols and an M16 assault rifle, killing them both instantly. Their assailants also opened fire at their female companions, Johaira Mohammad, Leisith Tan and Clarizze Tubilan, who were riding a separate motorcycle, hurting all three of them.

About seven hours later, gunmen killed Moro engineer Surraff Kadir Pasandalan in an ambush at the LR Sebastian area in Barangay Rosary Heights 10, Cotabato City the. Pasandalan was a resident of Barangay Taviran in the nearby Datu Odin Sinsuat town in Maguindanao del Norte. 

Pasandalan and his 16-year-old son were riding together on a motorcycle, en route to a residential area in Barangay Rosary Heights 10, when they were waylaid by gunmen who immediately escaped.

Pasandalan died from bullet wounds sustained in the attack. His son, who was wounded in the incident, is now confined to a hospital.

Cotabato City Mayor Bruce Matabalao and his constituent barangay officials have separately condemned the atrocities.

The perpetrators of the three separate ambushes in Cotabato City, from early Saturday until noon Sunday, are now subject of an extensive manhunt by personnel from different units of PRO-BAR in Cotabato City, the capital of the Bangsamoro region.

Salanguit said Matabalao, who, as mayor, is also chairperson of the Cotabato City Peace and Order Council and his constituent-community leaders in Barangays Rosary Heights 10 and 11 and in Poblacion 5 are helping units of the Cotabato city police, under Bongcayao, resolve the three separate atrocities.