3 anti-COVID-19 volunteer frontliners killed in Maguindanao

MAGUINDANAO ---- Gunmen shot dead three Moro volunteer COVID-19 frontliners in a daring attack in Buluan town late Thursday. 

The fatalities belonged to a local service-oriented group Kabalikat, actively supporting the anti-coronavirus containment efforts of the Buluan municipal disaster risk reduction and management council.

In his report to Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (PRO-BARMM), Colonel Donald Madamba, Maguindanao provincial police director, said the victims, Lucman Rasul, Teng Lawan and Ilo Lawan, were together in a roadside coffee shop in Buluan when their attackers arrived and shot them with pistols.

Buluan is located in the second district of Maguindanao province. 

The three men died from multiple bullet wounds.

Local officials said the slain men belong to a group in the Kabalikat actively supporting the Buluan local government unit’s war on coronavirus through quarantine checkpoint duties. 

Local police investigators are still clueless on the identities of the culprits and their motive for the attack.

Two anti-COVID-19 frontliners were badly wounded in a gun attack Monday in Bongao town in Tawi-Tawi.

Niezel Ladjauddin Asakil and Kevin Pon, both employees of the Bangsamoro Ministry of Social Welfare and Development, were on their way home from an official assignment in Panglima Sugala town in Tawi-Tawi when they were attacked somewhere in Barangay Lapid-Lapid in Bongao.

The duo, who sustained gunshot wounds in different parts of their bodies, was immediately airlifted to Zamboanga City for treatment.

Maguindanao and Tawi-Tawi are both component-provinces of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.