Police tightly guarding Cotabato town from criminals

NORTH COTABATO --- The police has cracked the whip on criminals in Pikit town where gunmen killed in the past eight weeks more than 10 people, two of them foreigners.Chief Inspector Aldrin Gonzalez, spokesman of the Police Regional Office-12, said on Friday that municipal police personnel have impounded in the past two weeks 148 motorcycles without documents in operations meant to restrain movements of criminals in the municipality.The spate of shooting incidents in Pikit town, which began as a strategic fort of the Spaniards and, subsequently, the Japanese during World War II, has prompted the crackdown.The domestic law enforcement activities are also focused on hunts for suspects in crimes with standing arrest warrants.The recent deadly gun attacks in Pikit, located in the first district of North Cotabato, involved gunmen on motorcycles.In a report to PRO-12 Thursday, Chief Inspector Romy Castañares of the Pikit municipal police said they have also seized 48 tricycles with questionable permits.Castañares said local officials and religious leaders have intensified the settlement of feuds among local Moro families, blamed for most of the vendetta killings in the municipality.Pikit is known as gateway to central Mindanao’s 220,000-hectare Liguasan Delta, a lair of criminal gangs and Islamic State-inspired militant blocs.Among the fatalities in the latest rash of killings in Pikit were the 60-year-old American merchant Jeff Michael Keith, a retired US Marine serviceman, and Pakistani money lender Etesham Ulhag.Keith, a dealer of grocery and other consumer goods, waskilledon October 29 by robbers using pistols while delivering his merchandise to contactsinthePikit municipal market.The suspects took his bag containing more than P200,000 worth of cash before they fled on motorcycles.The incident was preceded by the gruesome deathina highway robbery of UlhaginBarangay DalingaoeninPikiton October 24.Like Keith, Ulhag was also divested of his money by his pistol-wielding assailants whom witnesses overheard talking to each otherinethnic Maguindanaon dialect as they scampered away.Gonzalez and Castañares both said the municipal peace and order council has tapped the support of local commanders of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in its bid to address local security constraints.The MILF and the government are bound by an interim security pact, the 1997 Agreement on General Cessation of Hostilities, to cooperate in neutralizing criminals and terrorists in conflict flashpoint areas in the south.Gonzalez said the cooperation among local leaders, the MILF and the Pikit municipal police is gaining headway.