DAVAO CITY – The Philippine said launched an operation to hunt down gunmen who shot dead an army scout ranger and seriously injured another officer in the restive region of Mindanao.
Capt. Alberto Caber, a spokesman for the Eastern Mindanao Command, has confirmed the twin attacks, but he did not say who were behind them. He said motorcycle gunmen fatally shot a member of the 12th Scout Ranger Company in the village of San Antonio in Compostela Valley’s Mabini town on July 16.
The soldier was returning home after bringing his son to school when two gunmen in separate motorcycles shot him, Caber said. “He was killed instantly. The soldier was unarmed and in civilian clothes,” he told the regional newspaper Mindanao Examiner.
He did not identify the victim, but Caber said two gunmen riding tandem on a motorcycle also attacked Colonel Edwin Respecio in Cagayan de Oro City.
He said Respecio, deputy commander of the army’s 10th Regional Community Defense Group, was travelling in a car when the gunmen shot him several times.
“The perpetrators who were riding in tandem immediately escaped after the incident,” he said, adding, the officer survived the shooting, but is seriously injured.
“The victim suffered gunshot wound in his left face. Colonel Respecio is now in stable condition,” Caber said.
No individual or group claimed responsibility for the two daring attacks, but the region is a known stronghold of the communist rebel group New People’s Army, blamed by the military and police for the spate of ambuscades of soldiers and policemen in Mindanao.
The NPA has been fighting for the establishment of a Maoist state in the country. (Mindanao Examiner)
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