Military asset gunned down

COTABATO CITY – Unidentified gunmen shot dead in Carmen, North Cotabato yesterday a popular “military asset” helping locate the whereabouts of dreaded Moro Islamic Liberation Front Commander Ameril Umbra Kato.

The Carmen municipal police identified the slain “informer” as Barbih Octa­vio, a resident of Katanayan, a remote barangay in the same town.

Octavio was on his way to the town proper of Carmen when two men, armed with caliber .45 pistols, flagged him down and, without warning, opened fire, killing him on the spot.

Octavio is known in his community for his active involvement in the military’s pacification campaign in areas covered by the ceasefire between the government and the MILF.

Octavio, in fact, actively helped the military’s intelligence community in determining the exact whereabouts of Kato, now wanted for leading a group of some 500 guerillas that plundered and occupied for three weeks more than a dozen farming villages at the border of North Cotabato’s Aleosan and Midsayap towns.