Child, 4 others dead in 3 Central Mindanao gun attacks

November 11, 2026 | 7:35am

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — Five were killed, among them an Islamic preacher and a 12-month-old child, in separate gun attacks in three neighboring towns in Central Mindanao on Monday, November 9.

The Muslim missionary Alim Saad Casad Abdulhamid was attacked on Monday morning by gunmen while at one spot in Barangay Mataya in Buldon, killing him instantly.

He is the ninth Muslim preacher killed in different towns in Administrative Region 12 and in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao since January.

Barangay officials in Mataya, a hinterland area in Buldon, told reporters on Tuesday that the assailants of Abdulhamid managed to escape before responding volunteer community watchmen could reach the scene.

Captain Steffie Salanguit, spokesperson of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region, said on Tuesday that local executives in Buldon and officials of their municipal police force are cooperating in putting a close to the incident.

Two ethnic Maguindanaon men, Ali Madsid Mling and Akmad Matabalao Pendililang, both died instantly from multiple bullet wounds sustained in an ambush on Monday afternoon in Barangay Poblacion in Datu Paglas, Maguindanao del Sur.

Officials of the Maguindanao del Sur Provincial Police Office had told reporters that Mling and Pendililang were riding a motorcycle together when they were waylaid by gunmen at a stretch of a highway in Sitio Olongapo in Barangay Poblacion in Datu Paglas.

Local officials said the ambushers immediately fled using getaway motorcycles, leaving the duo behind, both lifeless.

Two hours later, a Moro farmer, Norhan Mangulamas, and his 12-month-old son were killed in another ambush in Barangay Dalingaoen in Pikit town in Cotabato in Region 12.

Mangulamas, his son and his spouse were together in a tricycle he was driving then when they were repeatedly shot with pistols by gunmen positioned along a stretch of the highway in Barangay Dalingaoen.

Mangulamas and his son both died instantly in the incident, which left his spouse, also an ethnic Maguindanao, badly wounded.

They were on their way home then to the nearby Sitio Tubak in Barangay Pagangan in Aleosan, Cotabato when they were attacked by still unidentified assailants, according to local executives and police investigators who responded to the incident.

The wife of Mangulamas, who was hit by bullets in different parts of her body, was immediately brought by emergency responders to the Cotabato Regional Medical Center in Cotabato City for treatment.

Officials of the Cotabato Provincial Police Office, under the Police Regional Office 12,  and intelligence agents from units of the Army’s 602^nd Brigade, covering parts of the province, are cooperating in identifying the culprits in the atrocity for prosecution. 

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