Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Second Philippine mayor in 2 days killed

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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 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 on any list of drug suspects, according to the government’s main anti-drug agency.

 ?? AP/RAAD ADAYLEH ?? Jordanian residents of Jabir village near the Syrian border watch aid deliveries Tuesday to Syrians fleeing a government offensive.
AP/RAAD ADAYLEH Jordanian residents of Jabir village near the Syrian border watch aid deliveries Tuesday to Syrians fleeing a government offensive.

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