Mayor survives ambush after Duterte threat

MANILA: A mayor accused of involvement in narcotics trafficking survived an ambush yesterday, police said, four months after President Rodrigo Duterte publicly threatened to kill him.

Retired police chief superintendent Vicente Loot, a mayor in the central province of Cebu, had been repeatedly named by Duterte as one of the so-called “narco-generals” protecting the illegal drug trade.

Loot yesterday was on a boat arriving with his family at a port in the Cebu town of Daanbantayan when gunmen opened fire and wounded four people, police said. The mayor was unhurt.

Loot told radio DZMM he was urging authorities to investigate the incident but refused to speculate on the motive. He denies links to drugs.

Duterte has launched an unprecedented war on drugs, which has cost thousands of lives. He first named Loot in 2016 as part of his so-called “drug list” of local officials, policemen and judges.

Three other mayors on the list have since been shot dead, one of them while inside a jail cell.

Duterte had lashed out at Loot as he questioned the source of the mayor’s wealth.

In December last year, he recounted a conversation he had with the official.

“Did I not tell you during my meeting with (mayors), I told Loot, ‘You son of a w***e.

“General Loot, you are a general. I will kill you’. Because (he) used government for wrongdoing,” Duterte said during a disaster briefing.

The ambush came on the eve of local elections today, and two weeks after authorities released a list of over 200 elected officials with alleged links to drugs.