Project contractor slain in ambush in Cotabato town

KIDAPAWAN CITY -Unidentified gunmen shot dead a project contractor while heading towards home in a remote village in President Roxas, North Cotabato, around 6 p.m., Friday.Chief Inspector Romy Castanares, chief of the President Roxas municipal police station, identified the victim as Nilo Sintos, 52, sub-contractor of several road projects of the Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) along the Arakan Valley Development Complex in North Cotabato. Sintos sustained several gunshot wounds in the head and in different parts of his body.Castanares was certain the target was Sintos because his face was exposed for not wearing a crash helmet while traversing Barangay Ilustre, an area located at the upper portion of President Roxas town, which already became a ‘common’ ambush site.Months ago, communist guerillas operating in Bukidnon-Cotabato area ambushed two members of the Army’s 57thInfantry Battalion.One of the soldiers died on the spot while another was seriously wounded. Castanares has yet to dig deeper their probe on Sintos’s murder. One of the angles being studied is the possibility of extortion allegedly perpetrated by the New Peoples’ Army (NPA) as Sintos was involved in several projects along the Cotabato-Bukidnon highway. Sintos’s killing was the third incident to happen at the Arakan Valley Complex, since August. Early August, a leader of a progressive peasant group identified as Joel Gulmatico was gunned down by still unidentified suspect in Barangay Naje, Arakan. A week later, a tanod of Barangay Lama-Lama in President Roxas identified as Alvin Embac was shot dead while inside his home.Embac was accused of aiding government troops in looking for possible NPA hideouts and members in towns of President Roxas, Antipas, and Arakan. A week after killing Embac, suspected NPA rebels ambushed a CAFGU member and his son in Barangay Makalangot, also in Arakan.The son died while the father is still recuperating in one of the hospitals in North Cotabato.