STREET AMBUSH. Police cordons the area near the intersection of Gonzalo Javier Street and Oblate Drive in Barangay Rosary Heights 6, Cotabato City, where two soldiers onboard a motorbike (inset) were tailed and fired upon by gunmen riding a separate motorcycle on Tuesday, July 2, 2019. One of the victims died at the hospital while the other remains in serious condition. (Photo courtesy of Erwin Cabilbigan – DXMY Cotabato)
COTABATO CITY – Police are in pursuit of motorcycle-riding gunmen who ambushed and killed an off-duty soldier and seriously injured his colleague along a busy intersection here on Tuesday.
The 1:30 p.m. ambush occurred at the corner of Gonzalo Javier Street and Oblate Drive in Barangay Rosary Heights 6 with Army Cpl. Herminio Belano, 28, expiring later at a government hospital here.
Capt. Rustom Pastolero, Police Station 2 chief, said Belano’s companion, Cpl. Pacifico Obillo, 32, of Balaoan, La Union, was injured and is still in the hospital.
Belano of San Mateo, Isabela, was driving the motorcycle with Obillo as his back rider when fired upon by the gunmen onboard a separate motorbike along the junction of Oblate Drive and Gonzalo Javier Street.
“Witnesses saw a riding-in-tandem tailing the soldiers with one of them firing at the victims as they reached the junction,” Pastolero said, adding that the soldiers were unarmed and in civilian clothes at the time of the incident.
Belano succumbed to a gunshot wound in the head while Obillo remained under close observation at the hospital.
The victims belong to the Army’s 5th Special Forces Battalion and assigned at a detachment in Sitio Bubong, Barangay Kalanganan, this city. (PNA)
