By Roy Ramos
ZAMBOANGA CITY
Security has been beefed up in a southern Philippine province following a fatal ambush on a village chief hailing from a major political clan and his companions.
Maj. Jo-ann Petinglay, army information officer, told The Anadolu Agency on Wednesday that army and police troopers were deployed to strategic areas of Maguindanao in anticipation of a possible retaliation by the victims' family.
Petinglay said Michael Sinsuat Dalidig, village chief of Dimapatoy, was traveling aboard a minicab alongside two relatives, and village councilman Jonathan Benito and his wife when gunmen opened fired on them at around 18.00 (10.00 GMT) Tuesday.
They had been departing from Benito’s home along a remote road, and died on the spot after suffering multiple gunshot wounds in Datu Odin Sinsuat town.
The scene of the ambush is located just a few kilometers from an army camp.
Petinglay said police investigators had determined the attackers used various kinds of high-powered firearms, including M16 rifles, based on empty shells found in the area.
At the time of reporting, police said they did not have any leads as to the motive.
Maguindanao Vice Governor Datu Lester Sinsuat, a relative of the slain victim, immediately rushed to the scene Monday night and condemned the killing.
The Sinsuat clan is one of the biggest political clans in Maguindanao, a bastion of the Philippines’ one-time largest Muslim rebel group, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).
The MILF signed a March 27 peace deal with the government that brought to a close 17 years of negotiations and ended a decades-old armed conflict in Mindanao -- the country’s second largest and southernmost major island -- while granting Muslim areas greater political autonomy.
Maguindanao is among the Mindanao provinces that suffer from guerrilla attacks by the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters, a breakaway faction of the MILF opposed to the peace agreement.
Revenge killings – known as "rido," a term meaning clan war in the local Moro dialect -- are prevalent in the southern Philippines, usually precipitated by land disputes, intense political rivalries and affronts on family pride and honor.
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