Three Grade 7 students die in BARMM road accident

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February 21, 2026 | 3:07pm

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — Three male Grade 7 students died instantly from injuries when the tricycle carrying them was hit by two trucks, one after another, at a stretch of the Sayre Highway in Barangay Kitulaan in Kapalawan in Cotabato province on Friday, February 20.

Kapalawan is one of the eight newly-created municipalities in the Bangsamoro Special Geographic Area under the regional government of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, but is inside Cotabato province in Region 12.

The fatalities, Ghoyghoy Andres, Koking Silva and Wako Alburo, all from an indigenous non-Moro community, were on their way home to Barangay Poblacion in nearby Carmen, Cotabato, when they figured in the accident that left all three of them dead.

The Carmen Municipal Police Station and a unit of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Kapalawan stated in separate reports on Saturday that the victims were together in a tricycle, driven by Junel Andres, that got hit first by an Isuzu Forward truck and, as it veered towards the other lane of the highway, was rammed by a 10-wheeler truck head-on.

All three students died immediately from injuries sustained in the accident.

Emergency responders immediately transported the badly injured tricycle driver, Andres, to a hospital for treatment.

Local executives in Carmen and officials of their Municipal Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office told reporters on Saturday that the drivers of the two trucks involved in the accident, Joide Talaman Lomogdang, a resident of Barangay Ranzo in Carmen, and Lorenzo Tabanao Bagacay, who is from Barangay Sinagguyan in Don Carlos, Bukidnon, voluntarily surrendered to policemen who responded to the incident.