Riding-in-tandem assassins kill villager, hurt fire officer in Cotabato

COTABATO CITY, Philippines - As if taunting local authorities, gunmen riding motorcycles killed a villager and wounded a fire service officer in separate incidents here Sunday.

The attacks were perpetrated amid a supposedly tight enforcement by the local police and Marine Battalion Landing Team 1 of the election gun ban, which took effect on Jan. 13.

The slain villager, Banjamin Taup, died on the spot from gunshot wounds in different parts of his body.

Taup was standing along a busy thoroughfare in Pagagaw area in Tamontaka district when one of two men riding a motorcycle together shot him with a pistol, killing him on the spot.

The suspects casually left away, leaving Taup sprawled on the ground.

The incident preceded the near-fatal attempt to kill Fire Senior Inspector Dennis Hermoso of the Bureau of Fire Protection in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.  

Hermoso was driving in a busy street in his black Toyota Fortuner bearing license plates ZHL 676, when his motorcycle-riding attackers overtook and shot him with .45 caliber pistols, wounding him in the arm.

Hermoso’s companion, Senior Fire Officer 1 Hazel Saavedra, survived the attack ambush unscathed.

The two incidents came after a security guard, Ernani Fronda, was wounded in an attack by a still unidentified gunman near a public market here.

A tricycle driver named Samier Montal, who was behind Fronda, was wounded in the shooting frenzy.