Ranking MILF official, companion killed in ambush

January 13, 2026 | 7:32pm

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — Men armed with assault rifles killed one of the ranking leaders of the 118th Base Command of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and a companion in an ambush in Barangay Kapinpilan in Ampatuan, Maguindanao del Sur on Monday night, January 12.

Officials of the Maguindanao del Sur Provincial Police Office and the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region separately told reporters on Tuesday that Hamza Sangki Kindo and Mohammad Kader Acob were together in a white minivan, on their way to one area in Barangay Kapinpilan in Ampatuan when they were attacked by gunmen positioned along the route.

Kindo, 46, a senior official of the MILF’s 118th Base Command, whose members are scattered in Ampatuan and in nearby towns in Maguindanao del Sur, and the 44-year-old Acob, who both sustained bullet wounds in different parts of their bodies, were both declared dead on arrival by physicians at a hospital where barangay officials brought them for treatment.

The slain Acob was also a member of the MILF, according to local executives.

Col. Sultan Salman Sapal, Maguindanao del Sur provincial police director, said barangay and municipal local officials and investigators from the Ampatuan Municipal Police Station are cooperating in identifying the assailants of Kindo and Acob for prosecution.

Their attackers, who managed to escape before responding barangay officials and volunteer watchmen could reach the scene, are now subject of an extensive manhunt by policemen and intelligence agents from the Army’s 601st Infantry Brigade.

The area where Kindo and Acob were waylaid is not too distant from where a heavily-armed group killed in a similar attack in August 2022 the chief of the Ampatuan municipal police then, Lt. Reynaldo Samson and his escort, Corporal Salipudin Endab.

Samson and Endab and other policemen were returning to their police station then, after a law-enforcement operation in a secluded area in Ampatuan, when they were ambushed, killing them both instantly.

One of their attackers, Kamid Kambal Asam, was arrested by policemen in May 2024, while in a private hospital in Midsayap town in Cotabato province, where he was confined then due to an illness.

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