3 killed, 15 wounded in violence hours before Bangsamoro vote

National

GUNFIRE shattered the calm hours before voting began on Monday, Sept. 14, in the Bangsamoro region, killing three people and wounding 15 as the autonomous territory prepared for a landmark parliamentary election.

The shooting broke out shortly before midnight outside a school in Cotabato that was being used as a polling station, according to police.

Cotabato police chief Jibin Bongcayao said the violence began when members of two rival political groups confronted each other over their positions in the queue to vote.

“It started as a struggle for position in the queue between two groups,” Bongcayao said in a Philstar report.

What began as a dispute over positions in line escalated into shoving and then a fistfight before gunfire erupted in the crowded area, Bongcayao said.

The people involved belonged to rival political parties that emerged from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), the former rebel group that fought for decades for regional autonomy in the predominantly Catholic Philippines, he added.

The violence happened as voters in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM) prepared to elect the region’s first parliament, a major milestone in a peace process that began in the late 1990s.

The peace process eventually led to the creation of the autonomous region in the southern Philippines, which has been governed by an interim administration pending the parliamentary vote.

Authorities had intensified security preparations in the days leading up to the election, deploying more than 20,000 security personnel across voting areas and organizing quick-response teams to deal with potential violence.

The vote is taking place in a region with a long history of political violence and blood feuds involving powerful families. Party leaders recently told visiting AFP journalists that a peaceful election would be considered a successful one.

Tensions had already surfaced before Monday’s shooting. Last month, a motorcade carrying the region’s interim chief minister, an appointee of President Ferdinand Marcos, was ambushed and peppered with bullets.

In a separate incident, a man died in hospital in the early hours of Monday following an explosion near another polling station. Police were investigating the cause.

The parliamentary election marks a key step in implementing the peace agreement that established the BARMM after decades of conflict in the southern Philippines.(MyTVCebu)