Engineer-professor killed in Cotabato City ambush

COTABATO CITY — A civil engineer and professor at a Catholic university was fatally shot in an ambush on a busy street in Cotabato City at around dusk on Tuesday, February 25.

Brig. Gen. Romeo Macapaz, director of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region, and his subordinate police director for Cotabato City, Col. Jibin Bongcayao, separately told reporters on Wednesday, February 26, that Engineer Israel Abas Angas died instantly from bullet wounds sustained in the attack.

Angas was a member of the engineering faculty team at the Notre Dame University in Cotabato City, only about 500 meters away from where he was killed.

He was driving his white Toyota Fortuner through Nayon Shariff in Barangay Rosary Heights 3 when two motorcycle-riding assailants, coming from the opposite direction, opened fire as they approached the driver's side of his vehicle. The attackers quickly fled toward a more secluded area in the same barangay.

Bongcayao said security camera recordings obtained from business establishments around the crime scene clearly showed the face of one of the two assailants of Angas.

“We now have an idea about this crime. We also have persons of interest, possibly behind it,” Bongacayao told reporters on Wednesday morning.

Macapaz said intelligence personnel from the 5th Marine Battalion, which is helping PRO-BAR and the Army's 6th Infantry Division secure all of the 37 barangays in Cotabato City, are supporting their efforts to identify the killers of Angas for prosecution.