4 dead, 4 hurt in North Cotabato gun attack

NORTH COTABATO, Philippines — Four villagers, one of them a three-year-old girl, were killed when gunmen fired at houses in an interior barangay in Pikit town Friday.

The fatalities, Sittie Abdullah, 58, Zenaida Mustapha, 36, Lagah Abdullah, 34, and the three-year-old Ashley Panigas, died from multiple bullet wounds.

Four others, Ryan Abedin, 13, Raad Abedin, 7, Asya Abdullah 8, and Asria Abdullah, 30, were badly hurt in the attack.

Captain Mautin Panandigan, police chief of Pikit town in the first district of North Cotabato, said gunmen shot with assault rifles the houses of the victims in Sitio Tugunan in Barangay Lagundi and hurriedly escaped.

Panandigan said investigators are still clueless on the identities of the culprits and their motive for the attack.

Pikit is locked in deadly clan wars involving local Moro families and is close to the 220,000-hectare Liguasan Delta, a known bastion of the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters, also known as the Dawlah Islamiya.

The group, operating in the fashion of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, is tagged in all bomb attacks in central Mindanao since 2014.