Doctor survives ambush by motorcycle-riding gunmen in Cotabato City

COTABATO CITY—A neurologist survived an ambush by motorcycle-riding gunmen while he was driving home from a hospital Tuesday night, police said.

Senior Superintendent Rolen Balquin, Cotabato City police director, said Dr. Remus Magabilen, 44, was driving his red Ford Explorer on Gutierrez Avenue around 7:30 p.m. when two men on a motorcycle drove up alongside the doctor’s vehicle and fired at him with a .45-caliber pistol.

Magabilen was wounded on the left arm but managed to drive fast back to the Cotabato Regional and Medical Center.

The assailants, who wore baseball caps, fled immediately as the shots they fired triggered a commotion on the busy Gutierrez Avenue, the main road leading to the compound of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

Witnesses said the speeding Ford Explorer hit the gates of the CRMC, damaging the vehicle. Security guards rushed to pull him out of the car and took him to the emergency room.

Police investigators were still trying to determine a motive for the attack on Magabilen, a known civic leader in the city. He is the son of former Cotabato City health chief Dr. Romeo Magabilen.