An ambush killed four members of the dreaded Maute terror group Saturday night who were among those arrested together with the Maute matriarch while traversing a town in Lanao del Sur.
A report by GMA News website named the four killed as Zulkifli Risales Maute, Aliasgar Hadji Suluman, Salah Gasim Abbas, and Allan Capal Sulaiman. Three policemen were reportedly injured.
The fatalities and some of their cohorts were being transported to Cagayan de Oro City for inquest proceeding when an unknown group fired shots at the three-vehicle convoy.
Three were declared dead on arrival at a nearbly hospital in Iligan City while the fourth one later on succumbed to his gunshot wounds.
Ominta Romato “Farhana” Maute together with two injured militants and seven unidentified women was arrested after their vehicle were intercepted Friday last week at Barangay Kormatan in Masiu town, according to Chief Supt. Reuben Theodore Sindac, regional police director of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM).
The Maute matriarch’s group tried to hide at nearby Barangay Dayawan, also in Masiu, where they brought a vehicle and guns before they tried to exit from Lanao del Sur.
The Maute matriarch was tagged as one of the financiers of the Maute group by operatives of the police Criminal Investigation and Detection Group that raided her residential compound in this city last December and reportedly recovered explosives.
The Maute brothers’ father, Engr. Cayamora Maute, was apprehended Tuesday morning at a checkpoint in Sirawan, Toril, Davao City alongside three members of his Cotabato City-based second family.
The captured matriarch’s niece, Rasmia, is married to former Marawi City Mayor Sultan Fahad “Pre” Salic, who was arrested by security forces at a police checkpoint in Misams Oriental last Wednesday.
Salic and his elder brother, Omar “Solitario” AIi, also a former three-term mayor of this city, are among 185 people ordered for arrest by the Department of National Defense for alleged involvement in the siege here.