Dawlah Islamiya supporter elude arrest, companion killed in Maguindanao del Sur clash

COTABATO CITY — A known supporter of three local terrorist groups who is wanted for 14 high-profile criminal cases eluded a police team out to arrest him before dawn Friday, but his two companions were not as lucky.  

Agents of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group were supposed to serve warrants of arrest to Sukarno Hamdan in Barangay Kaladturan in General Salipada K. Pendatun, Maguindanao del Sur but the operation turned awry when he resisted, provoking a gunfight that led to the death of his companion, Kadafe Kamendan.

Hamdan is known to local officials and barangay leaders in towns around General Salipada K. Pendatun as coddler of members of the Dawlah Islamiya, the Al-Khobar and the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters implicated in recent bombings of buses and establishments in central Mindanao whose owners had refused to pay “protection money” on a monthly basis.

Citing initial reports from the CIDG-BAR and the Gen. Salipada K. Pendatun Municipal Police Station, Bangsamoro regional police director Brig. Gen. Allan Nobleza on Friday afternoon said that Kamendan, who sustained multiple gunshot wounds, was declared dead on arrival by physicians at the Sultan Kudarat Provincial Hospital in Isulan town in Sultan Kudarat where policemen rushed him for treatment.

Nobleza said another follower of Hamdan, Bayan Samal Abdul, voluntarily yielded when he sensed that he had been surrounded by CIDG-BAR agents after they neutralized Kamendan, muzzles of their rifles aimed at him. Abdul is now detained, to be prosecuted for assault on persons in authority and illegal possession of an M14  rifle.

Witnesses reported to the local police that Hamdan, who was the target of the CIDG-BAR operation, had fled to a nearby marshland carrying a bag that they believe contained grenades and narcotics.

Hamdan is facing multiple murder, frustrated murder and armed robbery cases in different courts in central Mindanao, according to the officials of intelligence units of PRO-BAR, the Army’s 601st Infantry Brigade and the 6th Infantry Division under Major Gen. Alex Rillera.

Nobleza said that the CIDG-BAR’s operation in Barangay Kaladturan was assisted by personnel of the police’s