P300,000 reward offered for identities of Bangsamoro cops’ ambushers

April 1, 2026 | 11:20am

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — The governor of Maguindanao del Sur has offered P300,000 cash in exchange for information that could lead to the arrest of the gunmen behind the fatal ambush of five policemen in Shariff Aguak town on Saturday night, March 28.

It was the third deadly ambush, since 2017, of a police team in the same thoroughfare in Shariff Aguak, one of the 24 towns in Maguindanao del Sur in the Bangsamoro region. The areas where the policemen were attacked then are not too distant from Camp Akilan in Shariff Aguak, where the headquarters of the Maguindanao del Sur Provincial Police Office is located.

Gov. Ali Midtimbang announced his monetary incentive offer during a meeting on Tuesday at his office in Buluan town of the multi-sector Maguindanao Provincial Peace and Order Council that tackled the deadly incident in Shariff Aguak.

"We are doing our best to identify the men behind that atrocity for them to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of law," Midtimbang told reporters after their PPOC meeting at the provincial capitol in Buluan town. 

Brig. Gen. Jaysen De Guzman, director of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region, told reporters on Wednesday that Shariff Aguak Mayor Akmad B. Ampatuan, Jr. and barangay officials in the municipality are helping their investigators and intelligence agents identify the gunmen behind the atrocity.

The slain police personnel, Patrolmen Kenneth Perocho, Al-Fatah Marohom, Amil Bangsa, Arsenal Sivih and Sayed Ridwan, all from the 2nd Provincial Mobile Force Company, were together in a pick-up truck, returning to Camp Akilan from a peacekeeping mission in the town center of Shariff Aguak, when they were ambushed by men armed with combat rifles positioned along the route, killing all five of them instantly.

The ambush left three other 2nd PMFC members, Lt. Alfred Gregory, Staff Sgt. Adam Kamarudin Kansi and Master Sgt. Abubakar Lauban, wounded.

Their attackers managed to escape before responding policemen from the nearby Maguindanao del Sur provincial police headquarters and the Shariff Aguak Municipal Police Station could reach the scene.

De Guzman and the commander of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division, Major Gen. Jose Vladimir Cagara, separately told reporters that residents of Shariff Aguak and nearby towns had reported to their units in Maguindanao del Sur that remnants of the now defunct Dawlah Islamiya were behind the ambush, meant to stir an impression that they are capable still of perpetrating attacks anywhere in the province.

More than 2,000 members of the now non-functional allies Dawlah Islamiya and the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters, among them experts in fabrication of improvised explosives that can be detonated from a distance using mobile phones, have surrendered in batches to units of PRO-BAR and the 6th ID in the past five years.

All of them had been reintroduced to mainstream society through the joint efforts of PRO-BAR, the 6th ID and different line agencies in Region 12 and the Bangsamoro regional government and are now thriving as drivers of passenger vehicles, laborers in markets, construction workers, community watchmen under local government units and as farmers and fishermen belonging to livelihood cooperatives.