Police subject house of Montawal vice mayor to shabu search

MAGUINDANAO -- Two gunmen were wounded in a gunfight with a police team that raided Thursday the house of the vice mayor of Montawal town to search for drugs.Reports from the Police Regional Office-Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao indicated that the two men were bodyguards of Vice Mayor Otto Montawal.The police personnel who carried out the search operation were forced to shoot the two men when they opened fire, sparking a shootout.The vice mayor was said have escaped just as the raiding team arrived at his residential compound in Barangay Talapas in Montawal town in the second district of Maguindanao.The search operation that targeted Montawal and his son, Vicman, incumbent mayor of the municipality, was premised on warrants issued by Judge Alandrex Betoya of the Regional Trial Court Branch 16 in nearby Kabacan town in North Cotabato.The vice mayor’s brother, Andy, was also a target of the operation.Personnel of PRO-ARMM were also to search for firearms in their houses.Senior PRO-ARMM officials said the Montawals all managed to escape and are now subject of a joint police-Army manhunt.They have not confirmed yet if methamphetamine hydrochloride (shabu) and unlicensed firearms were recovered during the raids before dawn Thursday in Barangay Talapas.