Police chief, aide killed in ambush in same town where Maguindanao Massacre happened

GENERAL SANTOS CITY, Philippines – Gunmen killed a town police chief and his aide and wounded at least three others in an ambush in Ampatuan, Maguindanao province on Tuesday morning, August 30.

The Maguindanao police said Ampatuan town police chief Lieutenant Reynaldo Samson and his security aide-slash-driver, Corporal Salipudin Endab, were killed while they were on their way to make an arrest in the village of Kapinpilan shortly before 10 am.

The town is the site of the infamous Maguindanao Massacre where 58 people – many of them media workers who were covering a story – were brutally killed on November 23, 2009. It was the single deadliest attack on journalists on record.

The ambush took place two weeks after the Commission on Elections (Comelec) implemented a gun ban throughout Maguindanao on August 16, ahead of the September 17 plebiscite that would determine if the province would be split into two.

Investigators found the bloodied bodies of Samson and Endab on a road in Kapinpilan – one was sprawled on the ground while another was still in a police patrol car surrounded by onlookers.

A video clip that has gone viral showed onlookers scampering for safety when more gunshots were fired.

Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) police director Brigadier General John Gano Guyguyon said Samson and his group were about to serve an arrest warrant in Barangay Kapinpilan when they were greeted with heavy gunfire by armed men.

Guyguyon said a police team quickly responded and subsequently engaged the suspects in a firefight.

Police said they were pursuing a group led by one Abdulnasser Guianid. – Rappler.com