Farmer dead in another ambush in troubled Maguindanao del Sur town

COTABATO CITY —  A Moro farmer was killed while his wife was wounded in an ambush in South Upi, Maguindanao del Sur on Tuesday, barely three days after gunmen shot dead the vice mayor of the municipality along the same route.

Citing a report from the South Upi Municipal Police Station, Col. Roel Sermese, Maguindanao del Sur police director, told reporters on Wednesday that Bashir Saligan, a Maguindanaon, died on the spot from bullet wounds he sustained in the attack.

Saligan’s wife, Armia, was wounded in the incident. She is now confined in a hospital.

The couple were in their multicab vehicle, loaded with corn grains from their farm in Barangay Pandan that they were supposed to sell to a merchant in the town proper of South Upi, when gunmen positioned along the road in Sitio Bisang in Barangay Romonggaob opened fire and immediately fled.

Police investigators and intelligence agents of units under the Army’s 6th Infantry Division are cooperating in trying to determine if the atrocity is related to Friday’s fatal ambush of South Upi Vice Mayor Roldan Benito in nearby Barangay Pandan that also resulted in the death of his bodyguard, Weng Marcos.

The slain Benito and Marcos were on board a pick-up truck, on their way to a secluded area in Barangay Pandan from Barangay Romongaob, when they were attacked by men armed with M16 assault rifles, killing them both on the spot.

The ambush left Benito’s wife, Analyn, and minor companion, wounded.

Benito was one of the acknowledged leaders of the ethnic non-Moro Teduray tribe in South Upi, who was active in helping address the incursions of armed groups from lowland towns in Maguindanao del Sur trying to grab their lands in their state-recognized ancestral domains in the municipality.

South Upi Mayor Reynalbert Insular, chairperson of their multi-sector Municipal Peace and Order Council, on Wednesday urged relatives and sympathizers of Saligan and community leaders in Barangays Pandan and Romongaob to help the police identify the perpetrators of the ambush that resulted in his death.