Another female teacher in Bangsamoro region shot dead

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — Another female teacher in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao was killed in a gun attack on Thursday night, July 2, the second within just five days.

Evangeline Pantorilla Abdullah was standing along a busy stretch of a highway in Sitio Kurbada in Barangay Awang in Datu Odin Sinsuat, Maguindanao del Norte, when a gunman came close and shot her in the head with a .45 caliber pistol, killing her instantly. 

The assailant of Abdullah managed to escape amid the commotion triggered by the incident. Abdullah is married and has four children, the youngest of them barely four months old.

Abdullah had worked as a teacher in the Cotabato City National High School (CCNHS) in Cotabato City, got appointed two years ago as human resource management officer of the local government unit (LGU) in Shariff Saydona Mustapha in Maguindanao del Sur and occasionally tutored, during her free time, children of her friends and relatives in Barangay Awang and in nearby areas.

Captain Steffie Salanguit, spokesperson of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region, and the municipal police chief of Datu Odin Sinsuat, Major Katherine Paydoen, separately told reporters on Friday that investigators are still trying to determine if the brutal murder of Abdullah was related to her work in the LGU of Shariff Saydona Mustapha.

The engineer in Shariff Saydona Mustapha's LGU, Syed Ariff Malang, was killed in an ambush on July 16 last year in Barangay Timbangan in Shariff Aguak town, also in Maguindanao del Sur. His relatives had told reporters then that they were certain that the atrocity was related to his being municipal engineer in Shariff Saydona Mustapha, perpetrated by attackers personally known to him.

Malang and three others were on board his black Toyota Hilux pick-up truck, on their way to the town center of Shariff Aguak, when they were attacked by gunmen positioned along a stretch of the highway in Barangay Timbangan in the municipality.

Teachers in public schools around Barangay Awang and former colleagues of Abdullah in the main campus of the CCNHS in Cotabato City had separately relayed to reporters via text messages that she was hardworking, courteous and polite and had no known enemies.

The murder of Abdullah on Thursday night in Barangay Awang was preceded by the fatal ambush, five days before, in Barangay Lamin in Malabang town in Lanao del Sur of the school teacher Hapipa Saripada Macadato and a soldier, Cpl. Jayson Castro of the Army's 64th Infantry Battalion.

Macadato, who works in one of the public schools in Lanao del Sur, also a component-province of the Bangsamoro region, and Castro were in separate vehicles that gunmen, positioned along a stretch of a highway in Barangay Lamin, shot with assault rifles, killing both of them instantly. 

The ambush left the driver of the white Toyota Hilux pick-up truck, ridden by Castro and his companions, Richard Estomen, wounded.

The ambushers had escaped before responding barangay officials and volunteer community watchmen could reach the scene.