Shootout kills policeman, 12 others in Mindanao

MANILA: A former “barangay” (village) leader and 11 of his men as well as a policeman were killed in a shootout that lasted at least five hours with lawmen sent to arrest him in Maguindanao province, Mindanao, a senior police officer reported on Saturday.

Major Esmael Madin of the Maguindanao provincial police identified the slain leader as Datu Pendatun Kato Talusan who resisted when the lawmen arrived before dawn on Saturday to arrest him and five of his men in the town of Sultan Kudarat.

Madin said the arrest warrants were issued by a regional court where they were facing criminal charges for carnapping, robbery with homicide, double frustrated murder and illegal possession of firearms.

Madin added a police sergeant was also slain while four of his colleagues were wounded in the gunbatle that lasted for more than five hours.

Based on initial reports, Tulasan and his men first fired when their lookout alerted them on the arrival of the policemen at his heavily-guarded house in a village in Sultan Kudarat, according to Madin.

Also in Mindanao, officers reported the killing of two drug suspects with alleged links to terrorist groups in separate encounters with government forces in the provinces of South Cotabato annd Tawi-tawi.

Police said Kaharudin Santi, tagged as a member of the Daesh-inspired Dawlah Islamiya terror group , was killed while resisting arrest during a police raid in the town of Polomolok, South Cotabato on Thursday.

In Tawi-tawi, Riyadzkhan Maulana was killed when a lobbed a grenade at a team of Philippine Marines and policemen conducting an anti-drug operation in the town of Sapa-sapa also on Thursday.

Lieutenant General Corleto Vinluan, the chief of the military’s Western Mindanao regional command, reported that Maulana surrendered in April last year but continued with his illegal drugs trade.

Vinluan likewise linked Maulana to the kidnapping of five Indonesian fishermen from Malaysia’s island state of Sabah in January 2020. He said the Maulana group later turned over the Indonesians to the Abu Sayyaf terrorists who pledged allegiance to the Daesh extremists, who have been operating in Sulu and Basilan.

The Abu Sayyaf, meaning “bearer of the sword,” has gained notoriety through a spate of kidnapfor-ransom cases that were oten highlighted by the beheading of their foreign and Filipino hostages.

Regional and Filipino security experts have likewise confirmed the link of the Abu Sayyaf to the global Bin Laden terror network through the Indonesia-based Jemaah Islamiyah extremists.