Barangay Chair Promoting Interfaith Solidarity Slain in Cotabato Ambush

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — A Moro barangay chairman, known for his extensive involvement in programs promoting Muslim-Christian interfaith solidarity, was killed in an ambush in Carmen town in Cotabato early Sunday, August 2. Local executives and officials of the Carmen Municipal Police Station separately told reporters at noon Sunday that the ambush fatality, Arnel Aliudin, chairman of Barangay Cadiis in Carmen, most known in the municipality as “Boyet,” died instantly from bullet wounds sustained in the attack. Aliudin and his companions were together in their Mitsubishi L300 barangay service vehicle, en route to somewhere, when they were attacked by gunmen at a stretch of a highway in Barangay Kibudtungan in Carmen. He was driving the vehicle that their attackers, positioned along the route, shot with pistols, according to witnesses and barangay officials in Kibudtungan who responded to the incident. Lt. Col. Rolly Oranza, municipal police chief in Carmen, said the gunmen who attacked them immediately escaped, now the subject of an extensive police-military manhunt. Army Brig. Gen. Ricky Bunayog, commander of the 602nd Infantry Brigade, whose headquarters is in Carmen, said their intelligence agents are helping Oranza and his subordinate-investigators identify the killers of Aliudin for prosecution. Aliudin is known in Carmen, one of the 17 towns in Cotabato province, for his overt involvement in joint law-enforcement activities of the police and units of the 602nd Infantry Brigade and in community programs meant to foster religious and cultural cohesion among the Muslim, Christian and non-Moro indigenous communities in their municipality. Oranza and intelligence operatives of the 602nd Infantry Brigade said they are certain that it was Aliudin who was the target of the ambush, not any of his companions who survived the attack that left him dead.