COTABATO CITY (Tuesday, September 2, 2025) — Gunmen killed a 34-year-old ethnic Maguindanaon farmer, his wife and their adolescent daughter in an ambush on Monday, September 1, in Barangay Nalinan in Sultan Kudarat, Maguindanao del Norte.

Municipal officials and ranking personnel of the Datu Odin Sinsuat Municipal Police Station told reporters on Tuesday, September 2, that Ibrahim Payapat, his 32-year-old wife Zenaida, and their 16-year-old daughter, Aisa, died instantly from multiple bullet wounds sustained in the attack.

The incident left an 11-year-old male relative of the three ambush fatalities wounded, now confined to a hospital.

They were together in a tricycle, driven by Payapat, when they were attacked by gunmen positioned along a farm-to-market road in Barangay Nalinan.

Reports reaching the office of Brig. Gen. Jaysen De Guzman, director of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region, stated that Payapat, his spouse and their daughter were declared dead on arrival at the Cotabato Sanitarium Hospital in Barangay Pinaring in Sultan Kudarat where emergency responders brought them for treatment.

Barangay officials and police investigators who responded to the incident had told reporters that their assailants had immediately escaped, now subject of a joint police and local government unit manhunt.

De Guzman ordered the officials of the Sultan Kudarat municipal police force and their intelligence personnel under the Maguindanao del Norte Provincial Police Office to seek the support of barangay officials in identifying the perpetrators of the atrocity for prosecution.