Ex-Army colonel, villager killed in separate Cotabato ambush incidents

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February 7, 2026 | 4:34pm

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — Two residents, one of them a former Army officer popular for his involvement in social welfare programs for retired soldiers and police personnel, were killed while driving their vehicles in separate highway attacks in two towns in Cotabato province on Friday, February 6.

The retired Army Col. Leonardo Songcaya was driving his grey Nissan Navara pick-up truck, bearing license plates LAD 5635, when he was ambushed by men armed with assault rifles and pistols at the border of Kidama and Barangay Poblacion in Matalam town in Cotabato.

Songcaya died immediately from multiple bullet wounds sustained in the attack.

Lt. Col. Arniel Melocotones, Matalam municipal police chief, told reporters on Saturday that the gunmen who ambushed the 68-year-old Songcaya immediately escaped, now subject of an extensive manhunt by policemen and local officials.

Gov. Emmylou Taliño-Mendoza, presiding chairperson of the multi-sector Cotabato Provincial Peace and Order Council, has condemned the brutal killing of Songcaya, well-known for his extensive involvement in humanitarian programs of local government units and humanitarian entities for retired personnel of the Army and the Philippine National Police and civilian employees of line agencies residing in the province.

“I’m urging residents of Matalam to help the police put a closure to this incident and to all other recent bloody incidents in the municipality," Taliño-Mendoza said.

Officials of cause-oriented groups and hosts of community affairs programs of radio stations in the neighboring Region 12 and the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao have lately been hitting the LGU of Matalam for its perceived lackluster, or poor performance in maintaining law and order in the municipality.

More than 10 residents of Matalam, including minors, were killed in one gun attack after another in different areas in the municipality in recent months, all unsolved.

More than 20 villagers were hurt when two men together in a motorcycle bombed with a fragmentation grenade a group of revelers setting off pyrotechnics and fire crackers along a highway in Sitio Ipil-Ipil in Barangay Dalapitan in Matalam on New Year’s Eve, December 31.

Last January 9, or only nine days later, a volunteer community watchman sustained shrapnel wounds in the face when one of two men, also riding a motorcycle together, hurled a fragmentation grenade at the dump truck ridden by the victim and other members of the Matalam Barangay Peacekeeping Action Team while its driver was maneuvering through a stretch of a highway in Barangay Manubuan in the municipality. 

Matalam Mayor Oscar Valdevieso has offered a P500,000 cash incentive for any information leading to the arrest of the killers of Songcaya.

The fatal ambush of Songcaya was preceded by a similar atrocity earlier the same day in Barangay Cabaruyan in Libungan town in the first district of Cotabato that left the 40-year-old Jerry Agundar dead.

Agundar and his 36-year-old wife, Shirley, were riding their white Suzuki multicab, on their way somewhere, when they were attacked by gunmen positioned along the highway in Barangay Cabaruyan in Libungan, killing him instantly.

Agundar’s spouse, who was wounded in the ambush, was immediately brought by emergency responders to a hospital for their treatment.

Their assailants had run away before responding personnel of the Libungan Municipal Police Station and barangay officials could reach the scene.