Authorities prevent repeat of deadly clash in Pikit, Cotabato

COTABATO CITY — The police and military are initiating measures to avert possible escalation of hostilities between two Moro groups armed with unlicensed assault rifles that clashed in Pikit, Cotabato on Saturday, exacting fatalities on both sides.

Major Gen. Alex Rillera, commander of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division, ordered on Monday the 602nd Infantry Brigade to help local officials in Pikit diffuse the tension between the group of Sindato Karim, who is chairman of Barangay Lagunde in the municipality, and their adversaries, Basit Nando and his followers.

“We are supporting the peacekeeping efforts of the police and local leaders there,” Rillera told reporters on Sunday.

Nando and his men opened fire at Karim and his companions while they were scattering gravel on a stretch of a farm-to-market road in Barangay Lagunde, sparking a deadly gunfight.

The Pikit Municipal Police Station and the Police Regional Office 12 have separately confirmed that two followers of the incumbent barangay chairman Karim were killed in the ensuing encounter that also left three companions of Nando dead.

The municipality of Pikit has frequently been hitting the news owing to the never ending deadly gun attacks in its barangays since 2020. More than 60 people had since been killed in bloody incidents in the area, all unsolved.

Pikit has previously earned the tag “crime capital of Region 12” owing to the unabated killings in its barangays, also locked in deadly clan wars involving people that have assault rifles and grenade launchers.