COTABATO CITY — Police have implemented stricter measures in monitoring waterways connecting this city to nearby provinces following reports that rivers and other navigable bodies of water are being used as entry and exit points by criminals.
“Incidentally, most of the small rivers in nearby Maguindanao, Sultan Kudarat, and North Cotabato end up at Rio Grande de Mindanao river traversing the city,” Senior Supt. Rolly Octavio, city police director, noted on Thursday.
Octavio’s statement came in the heels of a shooting incident Wednesday that injured a pregnant woman along the downtown area here.
Expectant mother Raiza Dalimbang Kalis, 29, of Lebak, Sultan Kudarat, was walking with her sister along the sidewalk of the business center on Don Rufino Alonzo Street around 4 p.m. when a motorcycle-riding gunman abruptly stopped and fired at her twice using a .45-caliber pistol.
One of the bullets hit Kalis at the side of her tummy and exited at the back section of her abdomen, police said.
The gunman sped off after the incident. Aided by several bystanders, the victim’s sister rushed the victim to the Cotabato Regional and Medical Center where she remains under observation.
“Hopefully my sister and her baby inside would survive their delicate situation,” the victim’s sister, who requested anonymity for security reasons, said in a telephone interview by a local radio station.
Police said they are eyeing several “persons of interest” behind the attack.
Octavio described the incident as quite alarming considering that the victim is not a resident of this city.
“We have doubled police visibility in the city due to threats of terrorism and other lawlessness and yet such unfortunate occurrences still happen,” he said.
The police official believes that lawless elements could have been using small rivers and creeks crisscrossing the city as entry and exit points for criminal activities.
Following the incident, Octavio said he has ordered his 300-strong city police force to strictly implement a number system for all motorized bancas using the Rio Grande River for ferrying passengers from and to riverside communities; and the other water channels connecting the city to Maguindanao, North Cotabato, and Sultan Kudarat provinces.
“Motor bancas without numbers on their vessel’s body would not be allowed to enter unless cleared by authorities,” he said, adding that the passenger bancas would also be allowed only to dock at designated berthing points in the city.
Octavio said he has coordinated with the Army’s 5th Special Forces Battalion, which has been augmenting the city police force in securing the peripheries of the locality, for the regular mobilization of its riverine patrols in the city’s waterways. (Noel Punzalan/PNA)
