Armed group attacks Cotabato City village

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — Gunmen fired three 40-millimeter grenade projectiles and assault rifles at a residential enclave in Sitio Pakistan in Mother Barangay Kalanganan here on Monday night, September 28, causing widespread panic among Moro villagers.

No one was reported hurt in the attack, but the powerful explosions and automatic gunshots that reverberated through the area sent innocent residents running for their lives.

Col. Jibin Bongcayao, director of the Cotabato City Police Office, and Capt. Steffie Salanguit, spokesperson of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region, separately told reporters on Tuesday that investigators, intelligence operatives, barangay officials and traditional Moro leaders are cooperating in identifying the gunmen behind the atrocity for prosecution.

Mother Barangay Kalanganan Chairman Bimbo  Ayunan had told reporters an hour after the incident that it was him and his relatives who were targets of the attack.

He and his elders in the large Ayunan clan, of ethnic Iranun descent, are convinced that the attack was related to his having campaigned for the candidates of the regional party that he supported during the September 14, 2026 first ever Bangsamoro parliamentary elections.

The Commission on Elections permitted more than 10 regional political parties to participate in the electoral exercise, the first ever in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao since its creation in 2019, a product of a longtime peace overture between the national government and Southern Mindanao's Moro communities. 

Cotabato City, which has 37 barangays that are home to mixed Muslim, Christian and non-Moro indigenous communities, is the regional capital of BARMM,

Bongcayao and Salanguit separately told reporters that the attack at the predominantly Moro village in Sitio Pakistan in Mother Barangay Kalanganan was launched from one side of a river straddling through the area.

Bongcayao said the gunmen who perpetrated the atrocity retreated towards Sitio Baguer in Barangay Kalanganan 1 in west of Cotabato City.

Six individuals were killed while about 20 others were hurt in bloody election-related incidents in Cotabato City on the eve of the September 14 BARMM electoral exercise and during the actual polling day in barangays within its territory.