7 killed in separate Central Mindanao gun incidents

COTABATO CITY --- Seven persons, two of them women, linked to drug rings were killed in separate incidents in the neighboring Maguindanao and North Cotabato provinces Saturday.

One of the seven fatalities was identified as Akmad Manampen, a high-value target of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

Manampen had eluded an attempt by PDEA-BARMM agents to clamp him down in an anti-narcotics operation in Cotabato City early on.

Initial police reports had no mention of Manampen as one of the four fatalities in an ambush Saturday afternoon in the interior Barangay Tulunan in Datu Anggal Midtimbang town in Maguindanao.

Sources from PDEA-BARMM said Manampen could be the same person police investigators identified as Heredin Kamidon Kanakan based on pieces of evidence found in their vehicle that gunmen shot with M16 assault rifles and .45 caliber pistols.

Juvenal Azurin, director of PDEA-BARMM, said Sunday they once tried to corner Manampen in his hideout in Cotabato City.

He said Manampen had escaped, apparently informed by a lookout on the presence of agents approaching his hideout in Almonte Extension in Cotabato City.

Three other cadavers were found in the bullet-riddled multicab vehicle of Manampen, one of them that of a certain Fatima Manampen Usman.

Investigators are still trying to establish the exact identity of the second woman slain the attack.

Traditional elders and members of the Barangay government in Tulunan, a secluded area in Datu Anggal Midtimbang, said the four ambush fatalities were strangers.

“I am a native of this place, born and raised here. I do not know all four of them. They are not residents of this barangay,” an elected barangay official said in Filipino.

Brig. Gen. Samuel Rodriguez, director of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region, said Sunday investigators and intelligence units of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division are now cooperating in probing on the ambush incident in Barangay Tulunan.

The white vehicle carrying the four victims was motoring through a muddy dirt road some 200 meters away from a residential area in Barangay Tulunan when their attackers, positioned along the route, opened fire, killing all of them instantly.

There were indications that the victims were finished off with shots to their heads, according to local probers.

Personnel of the Datu Anggal Midtimbang police found several sachets of shabu (methamphetamine hydrochloride) in their trouser pockets.

The bloody incident in Barangay Tulunan was preceded by the death of three wanted drug dealers in a joint police-military-PDEA operation in Midsayap, North Cotabato just after dawn Saturday.

Accompanied by members of the Army’s 34thInfantry Battalion and the Midsayap municipal police, PDEA agents from Region 12 and BARMM were to peacefully search for shabu in the residence of gang leader Tony Doloan Mamintal in Barangay Kapinpilan but were fired at by his followers, sparking a gunfight.

Major Gen. Juvymax Uy of the Army’s 6thInfantry Division, which has jurisdiction over the 34th IB, said Sunday it was fortunate that there were soldiers in the raiding team who immediately provided enough cover fire for the PDEA agents during the encounter.

Uy and the PDEA offices in Region 12 and BARMM have confirmed that three henchmen of Mamintal, Farad Angagao, Tata Mamintal and Talus Baundi, were killed in the ensuing exchange of gunfire.

Mamintal, whose group is circulating shabu in Barangay Kapinpilan and nearby areas in Aleosan town also in North Cotabato, had escaped but two of his cohorts, Joy Mamintal and Satar Manticayan were arrested by PDEA agents after the gunfight.

Members of the 37th IB and the Midsayap police found two M16 assault rifles and an M14 rifle beside the cadavers of Mamintal’s slain followers.