Bangsamoro parliament staff shot dead in Cotabato City

COTABATO CITY — Two men riding a motorcycle shot dead a staff of the 80-seat Bangsamoro Transition Authority (BTA) while inside his car parked near a shopping mall in Cotabato City on Tuesday night.

The spot where Sulaiman Kusain Macabangon was attacked is close to a branch here of the Citi Mall, only about a kilometer away from the People’s Palace, which is the city government’s operation center, and from the regional capitol of the Bangsamoro region, in opposite directions.

Macabangon worked in the office of Bangsamoro parliament member Romeo Sema, representing the Moro National Liberation Front in the regional law-making body, most known as the BTA that has 80 members.

Citing a report from the Cotabato City Police Precinct 2, Brig. Gen. Allan Nobleza, director of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region, told reporters an hour after the incident that Macabangon died on the spot from multiple bullet wounds. His killers are now subject of an extensive manhunt.

The 50-year-old Macabangon was at the driver’s seat of his silver Toyota Vios car with license plates GAT 2575 and parked along the busy Gov. Gutierrez Avenue, near the Citi Mall, when one of two men riding together a Kawasaki Bajaj motorcycle that approached from behind shot him repeatedly with a pistol, killing him instantly.

Police Major Amil Andungan, Jr., chief of the city’s Police Precinct 2, said the duo immediately sped away amid the commotion triggered by the gunshots that reverberated through the scene.

Andungan said investigators under him and intelligence operatives from the Cotabato City Police Office are together trying to identify the culprits for prosecution.