3 villagers hurt in Maguindanao del Norte gun attack

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December 26, 2025 | 6:23pm

COTABATO CITY, Philippines —  Gunmen shot and seriously wounded three men drinking together, celebrating Christmas, in an attack at a residential area in Barangay Limbo in Sultan Kudarat, Maguindanao del Norte on Thursday night, December 25.

Municipal officials and traditional Moro leaders told reporters on Friday that all three victims, who sustained bullet wounds in different parts of their bodies, were immediately transported by emergency responders to the Cotabato Sanitarium Hospital in nearby Barangay Pinaring in Sultan Kudarat for treatment.

Lt. Col. Hector Tanio, acting Sultan Kudarat municipal police chief, said two pistol-wielding men casually approached the victims, then drinking liquor together along a thoroughfare in Sitio Torres in Barangay Limbo, shot them repeatedly and scampered away.

Witnesses have positively identified one of the two perpetrators of the atrocity, Jayson Guiabel Maliga, now subject of an extensive search by barangay officials and personnel of the Sultan Kudarat Municipal Police Station.

Brig. Gen. Jaysen De Guzman, director of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region, said local executives and intelligence operatives from the Sultan Kudarat municipal police and the Maguindanao del Norte Provincial Police Office are cooperating in locating Maliga and his accomplice.

De Guzman said he has ordered Tanio and his subordinate-investigators to file criminal cases against Maliga and his companion in absentia.