MILF leader killed in daytime Cotabato City gun attack

COTABATO CITY — Gunmen shot dead on Wednesday a commander of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, who was a former municipal councilor in Maguindanao del Sur province, inside a tightly-guarded compound of a hotel in the south of Cotabato City.

Abdurahman Kasid has just emerged from one of the function facilities in the compound of the Em Manor Hotel, where he attended an activity of the Bangsamoro human settlements ministry, when two men riding a Toyota Hilux pick-up truck shot him with pistols, boarded the same vehicle and left.

Security guards in the hotel compound scampered away when they heard gunshots, apparently scared of getting into trouble if they intervened.

The location of the Em Manor Hotel is not far from the well-secured government installations.

Relatives of the slain Kasid, officials of the Maguindanao del Sur Provincial Police Office and the Cotabato City Police Office told reporters on Thursday morning that the gun attack that resulted in his death is likely related to the hostility between two MILF groups in secluded areas in Mamasapano that repeatedly figured in deadly clashes in two barangays in the municipality in recent weeks.

Kasid, who had served as municipal councilor in Mamasapano, is identified with one of the two feuding MILF groups that are squabbling for control of strategic swaths of lands in the municipality, also locked in deep-seated political disputes and whose encounters in recent weeks had caused the displacement of thousands of innocent villagers.

The atrocity on Wednesday that resulted in the death of Kasid was preceded by last Sunday’s grenade attack at the Sto. Niño Chapel in Barangay Rosary Heights, Cotabato City by two men riding a motorcycle together that left two Catholic worshipers wounded.

The treasurer of Barangay Mother Bagua, Mhads Mamamantal, and his two-year-old daughter, Noralyn, were both killed in an ambush just last May 3 in a residential area in Barangay Rosary Heights 7 here.

The Sto. Niño Chapel and the area where Mamantal and his preschool child were fatally ambushed are both in the busy suburbs in this city, the capital of the Bangsamoro region.