North Cotabato MNLF vs. MNLF gunfight: 2 dead
Local News • 12:45 PM Thu Nov 23, 2023
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By:
John Felix Unson
COTABATO CITY - Two members of the Moro National Liberation Front, one of them a barangay kagawad, were killed in an attack by companions in the same group in Midsayap town in North Cotabato province shortly before midnight Wednesday.
In a report on Thursday to the Police Regional Office-12, Lt. Col. John Meridel Calinga, Midsayap municipal police chief, said Tho Puyo Singh and the volunteer community watchman Bayao Mohammad Uka both died instantly from multiple bullet wounds.
The slain Singh was a newly-elected kagawad in Barangay Kudarangan, an isolated area in Midsayap.
Calingga said Singh, Uka and their companions were together in a house in Barangay Kudarangan when they were attacked by a group of rifle-wielding men led by the siblings Sukarno Madidis Katog and Subandro Madidis Katog, also both longtime MNLF members.
Local officials said followers of Singh managed to return fire but were virtually outgunned immediately by their attackers, forcing them to scamper away leaving the slain duo behind.
The two groups, although both belonging to the MNLF, are long at odds over political differences and are squabbling for control of strategic swaths of agricultural lands whose residents they force to support favored candidates during electoral exercises.