
COTABATO CITY (Mindanao Examiner / Dec. 8, 2013) – Motorcycle gunmen shot dead a radio man in an attack over the weekend in the southern Philippines, reports said.
It said Michael Milo, 34, – who worked with PRIME Radio dxFM – was heading home on a motorcycle when gunmen shot attacked in Tandag City. Milo was shot in the head by gunmen who followed him from his work.
The motive of the attack is still unknown, but police are investigating the murder of the radio man – the second in just one week in the region – after motorcycle gunmen also killed broadcaster Joas Dignos, of radio station dxGT Radyo Abante in Valencia City.
In April this year, another radio broadcaster Mario Baylosis, who worked at the Radio Natin in Kabasalan town in the southern Zamboanga Sibugay province, was also gunned down in a broad daylight attack by assailants riding tandem on a motorcycle.
Baylosis just came from work and on his way home on a motorcycle when he was shot several times by the gunmen who tailed him. The assailants fled toward nearby town of Ipil.
Also in June, a hired killer fatally shot Miguelito Rueras, who was working for dyDD El Nuevo Bantay Radyo in Masbate province in Bicol region. He was tending his small convenience store when a lone gunman shot him several times in the chest.
In 2009, dozens of journalists who were covering a political convoy of Esmael Mangudadatu had been seized and brutally killed by some 200 gunmen who were followers of a rival clan in Maguindanao province.
Attacks on journalists in the Philippines are not uncommon and the country remains one of the world’s most dangerous for media workers. (Mindanao Examiner)