Cotabato City Vice Mayor Sema wounded in ambush near Tuesday noon

COTABATO CITY, Philippines—Vice Mayor Muslimin Sema of Cotabato City, who is also chairman of the Moro National Liberation Front, survived an ambush Tuesday, police said.

Senior Superintendent Danny Reyes, Cotabato City police chief, said Sema was heading for home from a city council meeting when ambushed by two gunmen on Gonzalo Javier Street around 11:40 a.m.

Sema sustained multiple gunshot wounds in the neck and body but was declared “out of danger” by physicians at the Notre Dame Hospital, according to Cotabato City Councilor Wilfrido Bueno.

Bueno said he talked to Sema at the emergency room and that “he was OK.”

“He was being attended to.  OK naman siya. He was wounded in his neck, (with the) bullet through and through, according to the doctor. His wounds are not critical,” Bueno said.

Initial reports said Sema’s escorts arrested one of the two assailants—a man identified as Camino Abdulla, who was wearing a body armor and who used an M-16 Baby Armalite rifle in the ambush.

Bueno said another assailant was killed in a shootout that followed the ambush.

Police have not determined the motive of the attack.—With Karen Boncocan, INQUIRER.net