Second Philippine mayor in two days killed

MANILA, Philippines — Another Philippine mayor was shot and killed Tuesday by an unidentified man in a road attack a day after a city mayor was gunned down in brazen back-to-back killings that prompted an opposition senator to call the country the “murder capital of Asia.”

Mayor Ferdinand Bote of northern General Tinio town was leaving a government compound in an SUV in northern Nueva Ecija province when a motorcycle-riding man shot him repeatedly with a pistol. The gunman escaped, police said.

On Monday, Mayor Antonio Halili was shot in the heart and killed while singing the national anthem with hundreds of employees in a flag-raising ceremony in his city of Tanauan, south of Manila. Videos taken by witnesses of the moment when an apparent single rifle shot felled the 72-year-old mayor and sparked chaos have gone viral online and sparked new alarm.

Opposition Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV blamed the killings on a “culture of violence” under President Rodrigo Duterte, whom he has criticized for a brutal anti-drug crackdown that has left thousands of mostly poor suspects dead in the past two years.

Duterte said without elaborating Monday that Halili’s killing may have been linked to illegal drugs. At least three mayors accused by his administration of involvement in the drug trade had been killed in raids by or clashes with the police.

Bote, 57, was not in any list of drug suspects, according to the government’s main anti-drug agency. Police did not immediately report any further details on his killing.