Islamic missionary shot dead in Cotabato City

COTABATO CITY --- A gunman shot dead in an attack here on Monday afternoon an Islamic preacher helping promote the programs of an influential bloc of Muslim clerics supporting the Mindanao peace process.

Major John Vincent F. Bravo, chief of the Cotabato City Police Precinct 2, told reporters Tuesday the victim, Mohammad Hessam Midtimbang was about to drive his black Nissan Almera car, parked along the busy Governor Gutierrez Avenue here, when a man approached from behind and shot him repeatedly with a .45 caliber pistol, killing him instantly.

Midtimbang, a cleric, works in the Bangsamoro Darul Iftah, also known as the House of Opinions, comprised of preachers, among them graduates of religious schools in the Middle East and North Africa, promoting cultural and religious solidarity among Muslim, Christians and indigenous non-Moro communities in southern cities and provinces.

The 32-year-old Midtimbang, who belonged to a large ethnic Maguindanaon noble clan in Maguindanao del Sur, also hosted a peace-advocacy program over a local radio station for the religious entity that he worked for.

Brig. Gen. Allan C. Nobleza, director of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro, said Tuesday their intelligence units are helping investigators identify the killer of Midtimbang.

Midtimbang was killed only about a week after a motorcycle-riding man had set off a fragmentation grenade at the residential yard here of former Commission on Elections chairman Sheriff Manimbayan Abas.

The bombing preceded by about three hours the ambush in an uptown barangay here of the chief of the general services office of the Cotabato City government, Pedro Tato, Jr. that left him wounded and his driver, Dandy Anonat, dead.