Manhunt on for 4 gunmen in slay try on Maguindanao town vice mayor's security escorts

From the Philippine News Agency (Mar 26): Manhunt on for 4 gunmen in slay try on Maguindanao town vice mayor's security escorts

SHARIFF AGUAK, Maguindanao -- Police here are hunting down four men on board separate motorcycles who attempted to liquidate four security personnel of a Maguindanao vice mayor Saturday night.

Senior Inspector Rasol Pandulo, Maguindanao police spokesperson, said manhunt operations are still going on against four men who tried but failed to kill four escorts of Vice Mayor Akmad Ampatuan of Shariff Aguak town.

Pandulo said Ampatuan's four escorts were on board a Toyota Tamaraw vehicle traversing the national highway here at 6 p.m. when four men riding tandem on two motorcycles opened fire on them.

The vice mayor's escorts returned fire, forcing the attackers to quickly flee. Ampatuan was not in the vehicle during the attack.

Citing witnesses, Pandulo said the four suspects fled toward Barangay Satan, also in Shariff Aguak. An Army base is about a kilometer away from the crime scene.

The motive of the attack was unclear but the four security escorts, identified by police as Mahdi Simpa, 33, Anwarudin Guiman, 25, Mama Ampatuan, 51, and driver Modef Simpal, 19, all local residents, believed it was politically motivated.

One of them told the police the attackers may have thought that the vice mayor was in the vehicle.

Responding police found about 15 empty shells of cal. 45 pistol at the ambush site.

Vice Mayor Ampatuan condemned the attack and called on the police to eradicate the proliferation of loose firearms in Shariff Aguak town, a bailiwick of the Ampatuan clan, some of whose members were implicated in the 2009 Maguindanao massacre where 58 persons, 30 of them media workers, were mercilessly killed in what was touted as the country's worst election-related violence.

http://www.pna.gov.ph/index.php?idn=2&sid=&nid=2&rid=974969