2 Army applicants killed in Maguindanao gun attack
Local News • 01:45 AM Sun May 26, 2019
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By:
John M. Unson
MAGUINDANAO --- Suspected members of a local Islamic State-inspired group killed two applicants for military enlistment in a daring ambush in Sultan Kudarat town Saturday.
Celso Kusain, 25, and the 23-year-old Anthony Jumadiao died on the spot from gunshot wounds in different parts of their bodies.
They were together on a motorcycle en route to their hometown, Parang, from Cotabato City when they were attacked while motoring through Barangay Rebuken in Sultan Kudarat.
They were both applicants for enlistment into the Philippine Army through the 6th Infantry Division based in Datu Odin Sinsuat, Maguindanao, according to relatives.
Officials of Army and police intelligence units in the province are certain their killers belong to the outlawed Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters.
The group has a reputation for attacking off-duty soldiers on highways crisscrossing the adjoining Maguindanao, Sultan Kudarat and North Cotabato provinces in central Mindanao.
The BIFF, blamed for all the deadly bombings in the region in recent years, operates in the fashion of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
BIFF hitmen have killed more than 20 soldiers while out of their camps in civilian clothes in attacks that started in 2015.
Brig. Gen. Graciano Mijares, director of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, said Sunday investigators will immediately file criminal charges against the killers of Kusain and Jumadiao once identified.
Mijares said barangay officials are helping personnel of the Sultan Kudarat municipal police identify the culprits.