8 suspects in Cotabato gun attack that killed kagawad, tanod arrested

COTABATO CITY — The police and military arrested in a joint operation on Thursday afternoon eight of at least 15 suspected gunmen who killed a newly-elected barangay councilor and a volunteer community watchman in Barangay Kudarangan in Midsayap, Cotabato before dawn the same day.

Brig. Gen. Jimili Macaraeg, director of the Police Regional Office-12, and Cotabato provincial police director Col. Harold Ramos separately confirmed to reporters on Friday morning the arrest of the eight suspects. They are now locked in a detention facility of the Midsayap Municipal Police Station.

The suspects allegedly killed with assault rifles a newly-elected kagawad, Tho Puyo Singh, and a barangay tanod, Bayao Mohammad Uka, in an attack in Kudarangan, a secluded area in Midsayap, at about 1:15 a.m. Thursday. Ramos said that policemen and personnel units under the Army’s 6^th Infantry Division are still trying to locate the accomplices of the eight suspects whose names were withheld in the meantime. 

The suspects were cornered by pursuing policemen and soldiers with the help of local officials and members of the Midsayap Municipal Peace and Order Council led by Mayor Rolly Sacdalan.

The joint police and Army teams that had tracked them down confiscated from them four M14 and three M16 assault rifles without corresponding licenses.

The slain Singh, 73, and 58-year-old Uka were both members of the Moro National Liberation Front.

Local officials said that the group behind the atrocity is hostile to Singh having defeated the candidate they pitted against him during the October 30 synchronized Barangay and Sangguniang Kabataan elections.