COTABATO CITY –- The local government has reinforced its “No ID, No Entry” policy to this city following the resurgence of armed riding-in-tandem preying on targets here.
Only last week, motorcycle riding gunmen separately shot two Marine officers and security personnel of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) in a span of three hours along Sinsuat Avenue, the city’s main thoroughfare.
In one incident, the gunmen trailed the single motorcycle of Sgts. Ferdinand Ulang and Arnel Navarro, both of the 7th Marine Battalion Landing Team, and shot them at close range.
Ulang died on the spot while Navarro was critically wounded in the incident. The two had just acquired a loan from the Armed Forces and Police Savings and Loans Association, Incorporated in this city when attacked.
Some three hours later, a riding-in-tandem also fired and instantaneously killed the motorcycle-riding Alfredo Tumbaga, a retired Marine personnel working as security officer at the ARMM-Regional Legislative Assembly in this city.
Responding Marine troops who were attending to the slain Ulang, however, managed to shoot dead one of Tumbaga’s attackers identified as Mohammad Saud Andes, 22, and wounded his cohort, Badjorie Karim, 28, during a shootout that ensued.
The twin incident stunned city residents, prompting local officials to call for stricter security measures for the locality.
City Mayor Frances Cynthia Guiani-Sayadi said the re-implementation of the “No ID, No Entry” policy, which began Monday, is aimed at maintaining “normalcy” since the passing of the “Curfew Hours” ordinance last year.
The city government has maintained the 10:30 p.m. to 3:30 a.m. curfew since May last year, shortly after President Rodrigo Duterte placed Mindanao under martial law due to the Marawi siege instigated by the Maute and Abu Sayyaf terror groups.
“Martial law has been proven effective in neutralizing lawless elements operating in the city,” Guiani-Sayadi told reporters here.
This developed as the city government also strengthened its city-wide, nighttime “Ronda Patrol” that now requires the city police force, Army support groups, and barangay force multipliers, to scour the interiors of the city’s 36 villages for law violators.
“There will be no sacred cows here because the law is the law,” Senior Supt. Rolly Octavio, city police director, said. (Noel Punzalan/PNA)
