4 killed in separate Maguindanao ambush incidents

MAGUINDANAO --- Four people were killed in separate ambush incidents Wednesday in the neighboring Parang and Sultan Kudarat towns in this province.

The first fatalities were identified as Dayaba Kari, 67, and his 30-year-old driver, Danny Apostol.

Kari and Apostol were together in a white Toyota Wigo bearing license plates ADP 3187 that gunmen from another vehicle trailing behind shot with assault rifles.

Both victims died on the spot from multiple gunshot wounds.

The attackers on a brown Toyota Innova sped away after the victims’ vehicle plunged into a three-meter crevice along the highway in Barangay Rebuken, Sultan Kudarat where they were attacked.

The incident was preceded by the ambush of two ethnic Iranun farmers by gunmen on motorcycles in Barangay Macasandag in Parang town.

Omar Pandi, 30, and the 40-year-old Esmael Mantar were on a truck carrying their farm products en route to Parang’s town market when the motorcycle-riding gunmen shot them with M16 rifles, wounding both of them seriously.
 
They died in a hospital where they were rushed by responding personnel of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

Pandi and Omar are both residents of Maguindanao’s Matanog town, where there is high prevalence of deadly family feuds involving local clans that keep firearms both as status symbol and as protection from adversaries.