4 dead in separate Mindanao ambush incidents

COTABATO CITY — Four individuals were killed in separate ambush incidents on Thursday in the provinces of Agusan del Sur in Region 13 and in Maguindanao del Sur in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

Police Major Milan Naz, police chief in San Francisco town in Agusan del Sur, on Friday said that oil palm plantation workers Rolando Ayaton and Jimmy Lucero both died from multiple gunshot wounds sustained in an ambush by suspected members of the New People's Army in Purok 7 in Barangay San Isidro on Thursday.

The gunmen reportedly fled toward a nearby hinterland where there is heavy NPA presence.

The first to perish in a similar incident in Shariff Saydona Mustapha in BARMM's Maguindanao del Sur province about three hours before were two Moro men, Rashied Lumangal at Nasrudin Alim.

Capt. Waldy Bunag, chief of the Shariff Saydona Municipal Police Station, told reporters in Cotabato City on Friday that Lumangal and Alim were in a blue multicab when men armed with M16 assault rifles, positioned at one side of a farm-to-market road in Sitio Bagkwang in Barangay Kilay, opened fire as they came close.

Lumangal and Alim both died on the spot from bullet wounds in their heads and upper torsos. 

Residents of Shariff Saydona and investigators from the municipal police said there are indications that members of the Dawlah Islamiya terror group could be responsible for the fatal ambush of Lumangal and Alim.