Cop, 2 villagers hurt in Cotabato City shootouts 

COTABATO CITY  --- Two residents and a police officer were wounded while 11 others were arrested in a spate of gunfights here Tuesday night reportedly sparked by a misunderstanding over a P15,000 bet between two groups playing Mobile Legends online game.

The friends Hubert Concepcion and Fitzgerald Patagan were busy playing Mobile Legends using their smartphones in the frontyard of their rented house in Barangay Rosary Heights 9 when men on motorcycles arrived and shot them with .45 caliber pistols, hurting them both seriously.

Neighbors had told reporters their attackers were from a group they were competing with for a P15,000 bet for an ML game.

“The other group, the suspects, cheated them and there was this quarrel that triggered that gun attack,” one of the sources, who asked not to be identified, told reporters.

Policemen, led by Major Elixon Bona of the Cotabato City Police Precinct 2, chasing the suspects were attacked by their rifle-wielding cohorts, positioned at one spot in nearby Barangay Rosary Heights 7 here.

Bona sustained a superficial bullet wound in the ensuing exchange of gunfire.

Bona and his subordinates had, subsequently, cornered 11 men in the vicinity, suspected accomplices of the suspects in the gun attack that left Concepcion and Patagan wounded.

Both victims are now confined in a hospital.

A coffee shop at the scene of the shootout where Bona got wounded was damaged by stray bullets.