Six dead, 13 hurt in Maguindanao Norte highway accident
Local News • 15:45 PM Mon Mar 6, 2023
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By:
John M. Unson
The pick-up truck that hit a tricycle and a van in Datu Odin Sinsuat town early Sunday. (From DOS Police)
COTABATO CITY - Six persons died while 13 others were hurt in a multiple vehicular accident at dawn Sunday in nearby Datu Odin Sinsuat, Maguindanao del Norte.
Major Regie Albellera, chief of the Datu Odin Sinsuat municipal police, told reporters Monday the accident, involving a tricycle, a pick-up truck and a passenger van, also left 13 others injured.
Three of the six fatalities, driver Unasan Kaul, and his passengers, Norhaimen Baladek and Manaut Guialudin, were together in a Toyota Hi-Ace passenger van that collided head-on with a black Toyota Hilux pick-up truck in a stretch of the Cotabato-Isulan Highway in Barangay Gubat in Datu Odin Sinsuat.
All three of them died on the spot.
Albellera said the injured driver of the pick-up truck, Bomber Gani, and two more van passengers, an old woman named Kaidu Manalasal and Mamakong Salimbao, died one after another in a hospital later.
Barangay officials and responding probers from the Datu Odin Sinsuat Municipal Police Station said Gani’s pick-up truck, bound for South Cotabato province from Cotabato City, first hit a tricycle and, subsequently, rammed the approaching passenger van as it veered to the left side of the highway.
The impact of the collision caused the van to plunge into a roadside coconut farm, about three meters down.
The van, full of Moro passengers, was en route to Cotabato City from Maguindanao del Sur province, according to Albellera.