2 cops killed, 2 hurt in Maguindanao anti-narcotics operation

COTABATO CITY — Two plainclothes anti-narcotics agents, one of them a woman, were killed while two others were wounded in a shootout with drug dealers in a bungled police entrapment operation in Sultan Kudarat, Maguindanao del Norte on Friday morning, November 15. 

Officials of the Maguindanao del Norte Provincial Police Office and the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region told reporters on Friday afternoon that two policemen involved in the operation, Patrolman Kirt Sipin and Cpl. Roselyn Bulias, died from bullet wounds sustained in their brief exchange of gunfire with the four shabu dealers they were to entrap.

 The encounter left two other policemen, Patrolmen Jonel Ramos and Eddie Sugarol, wounded.

Police Brig. Gen. Romeo Jaime Macapaz, director of PRO-BAR, told reporters on Friday that the slain and wounded police personnel were in a team tasked to buy a kilo of shabu from four dealers who pulled out guns and opened fire when they sensed that they were dealing with non-uniformed law-enforcement operatives in the supposed tradeoff along a stretch of a highway near the Crossing Simuay Area in Sultan Kudarat.

Two shabu peddlers who were slightly wounded in the incident, Suhod Kasim and Ting Katulangan, are now detained.

Members of different PRO-BAR units and local officials are trying to locate the accomplices of the two detained suspects who had scampered away when they ran out of ammunition, leaving behind their two companions, now under police custody.