Police, military urged to act on string of ambushes on Maguindanao officials
COTABATO CITY, Philippines — The Bangsamoro government has urged the police to look deeper into a series of recent gun attacks on public officials from Maguindanao province.
Lawyer Naguib Sinarimbo, local government minister of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, said Friday he has requested Police Brig. Gen. Marni Marcos of the Police Regional Office-BARMM and Major Gen. Diosdado Carreon of the Army's 6th Infantry Division to check on the seemingly similar patterns of the violent incidents.
Among the bloody incidents Sinarimbo was referring to is the near fatal ambush last month on Shariff Aguak Vice Mayor Akmad Ampatuan.
The vice mayor was wounded in the ambush that resulted in the death of his two aides, one of them a former barangay official in Shariff Aguak.
They were together in a vehicle that gunmen shot with assault rifles while on a busy stretch of a national highway traversing the town proper of Shariff Aguak a short distance from a government security checkpoint.
The attempt to kill the vice mayor was preceded by the ambush in Guindulungan town of Ampatuan municipal treasurer Roshel Kuit and husband Jeric, who were both wounded in the attack.
A number of barangay leaders from different towns in Maguindanao also perished in gun attacks in recent months.
"Among these incidents is the murder in Cotabato City of an auditor from the Commission on Audit who is assigned in Maguindanao," Sinarimbo said.
The victim, Guiaria Bagundang Akmad, was team leader of COA auditors covering Maguindanao province.
Akmad died on the spot when she and husband Ali were attacked just two weeks ago by gunmen on motorcycles while in their pick-up truck. They were shot as they were leaving a mall in a busy area of Cotabato City
Personnel of the Cotabato City police are still trying to identify her killers.
"I'm hoping for a closure on these incidents," Sinarimbo said.
Maguindanao is part of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao that also covers Lanao del Sur, Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi.
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