PAGADIAN CITY (Mindanao Examiner / Jan. 20, 2014) – Suspected Moro Islamic Liberation Front rebels ambushed a police convoy carrying a provincial police commander and wounded one of his escorts in the southern Philippines, officials said Monday.
Officials said about 20 rebels were involved in the attack which occurred along the highway near the village of Ilian in Lanao del Sur’s Picong town.
Senior Superintendent Nickson Muksan, police commander in Lanao del Sur, was among those ambushed. His police escort PO1 Jerson Muhammad, who is a member of the elite Special Operations Group, was shot and wounded and rushed to hospital in Marawi City.
“We have received reports the ambush was perpetrated by more or less 20 fully armed men, believed to be combined members of the ATGs and the MILF led by a certain (Commander) Umpa,” Capt. Jefferson Somera, a spokesman for the 1st Infantry Division, told the regional newspaper Mindanao Examiner.
ATG is the acronym for Auxiliary Threat Group which also refers to the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Movement and its army of so-called freedom fighters.
Army troops were deployed in the town to pursue the ambushers, but did not catch up with them.
Somera said Brig. Gen. Felicito Virgilio Trinidad, the division commander, told army commanders in Lanao del Sur to stay on alert following the attack.
The MILF did not give any statement about the ambush and its spokesman Von al-Haq was also not answering phone calls from journalists.
Somera said the motive of the attack is still unknown. (Mindanao Examiner)
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