4 dead in Cotabato City shooting incidents

COTABATO CITY - Four persons perished, two of them alleged “hired killers,” in separate shooting incidents here Monday night.

The first to fall was Norhamin Usman Guidel, shot dead at about 6:00 p.m. Monday by a gunman in the vicinity of the city plaza, not too distant from the Cotabato City Police Precinct 1.

The attacker had escaped before responding policemen could reach the scene. 

In less than 10 minutes, two men killed with pistols Rashidin Angas along a busy stretch of the Sinsuat Avenue here.

Angas was riding a motorcycle when two men trailing behind opened fire, killing him on the spot.

An employee of the Bangsamoro Transition Authority, Rahib Panumpang Payapat, was wounded in a gun attack about five minutes later near an intersection of two busy major thoroughfares here, one leading to the Bangsamoro regional capitol, about 700 meters away.

Payapat was driving his Toyota Hilux pick-up truck when men on motorcycles came close, opened fire and  immediately sped away.

His two assailants, Naif Kasim and Lakmudin Mohammad, were intercepted by patrolling policemen who immediately neutralized them when they resisted arrest.

Relatives of Kasim and Mohammad, who died from multiple bullet wounds, told reporters they both have shady personas.

Police and Army intelligence agents said the duo is tagged in a number of deadly gun attacks in the city in recent weeks. 

Interviewed by DXMS Radyo Bida, Cotabato City police spokesperson Lt. Colonel Carmelo Mungkas said investigators are determining possible involvement of the slain suspects in other crimes in the city.

Included in the probe is to determine if the guns that police recovered from them were used in previous gun attacks in the city.