Cop hurt in North Cotabato gun attack
Local News • 15:15 PM Wed Apr 27, 2022
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By:
John M. Unson
Members of Pikit MPS conduct checkpoint along the national highway following the shooting of a police officer in Pikit, North Cotabato Wednesday. (Pkit MPS)
PIKIT, North Cotabato - Suspected religious extremists seriously wounded a motorcycle-riding police corporal in an ambush here on Wednesday morning.
Cpl. Shanthy Ben Marcelo Buagas, 25, of the Regional Mobile Force Battalion 12, a rapid law-enforcement and anti-terror unit of the Police Regional Office-12, sustained multiple gunshot wounds in the attack.
In an initial statement, the Pikit Municipal Police Station said Buagas was riding a motorcycle en route to somewhere when he was attacked by two men while motoring through a secluded stretch of a highway in Barangay Batulawan here.
The two men, armed with .45 caliber pistols, hurriedly escaped using a motorcycle after they repeatedly shot Buagas.
Buagas, who fell from his motorcycle, was immediately rushed to a hospital by responding barangay officials and personnel of the Pikit Municipal Police Station.
Army and police intelligence units in North Cotabato are now trying to validate reports purporting that the culprits are members of the Dawlah Islamiya.
There is presence of the outlawed Dawlah Islamiya, fashioned from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, in Pikit.
The group has a reputation for attacking motorcycle-riding off-duty personnel of the Philippine National Police in secluded stretches of highways crisscrossing the provinces of North Cotabato and Maguindanao.