BARMM wants closure to bloody attacks on public officials
Breaking News • 10:45 AM Fri Jan 17, 2020
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By:
John M. Unson
BARMM Local Government Minister Naguib Sinarimbo.(John Unson)
BARMM wants closure to bloody attacks on public officials
COTABATO CITY -- The Bangsamoro government has urged the police to look deeper into the series of recent gun attacks targeting public officials from Maguindanao province.
Lawyer Naguib Sinarimbo, local government minister of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, said Friday he has requested Brig. Gen. Marni Marcos of the Police Regional Office-BARMM and Major Gen. Diosdado Carreon of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division to check on the seemingly identical patterns of the violent incidents.
Marcos and Carreon are senior members of the inter-agency BARMM regional peace and order council chaired by the region’s chief minister, Hadji Ahod Ebrahim.
Among the bloody incidents Sinarimbo was referring to is the near fatal ambush last month of Shariff Aguak Vice Mayor Akmad Ampatuan.
The vice mayor was wounded in the ambush that resulted in the death of his two aides, one of them a former barangay official in Shariff Aguak.
They were together on a vehicle that gunmen shot with assault rifles while on a busy stretch of a national highway traversing the town proper of Shariff Aguak not too distant from a government security checkpoint.
The attempt to kill the vice mayor, who was wounded in the incident, was preceded by the ambush in Guindulungan town of Ampatuan municipal treasurer Roshel Kuit and husband Jeric.
The couple both sustained bullet wounds in different parts of their bodies.
A number of barangay leaders from different towns in Maguindanao also perished in gun attacks in recent months.
“Among these incidents is the murder in Cotabato City of an auditor from the Commission on Audit who is assigned in Maguindanao,” Sinarimbo said.
The victim, Guiaria Bagundang Akmad, was team leader of COA auditors covering Maguindanao province.
Akmad died on the spot when she and husband Ali were attacked just two weeks ago by gunmen on motorcycles while on their pick-truck emerging from a mall in a busy area in Cotabato City
Personnel of the Cotabato City police are still trying to identify her killers.
“I’m hoping for a closure on these incidents,” Sinarimbo said.
Maguindanao is a component-province of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao that also covers Lanao del Sur, Basilan, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi.