COTABATO CITY (September 16, 2025) — Two were killed while three others were wounded in an ambush in a busy thoroughfare in this city at about noon Tuesday, September 16.

Local executives and officials of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region told reporters on Tuesday afternoon that Mike Pusaka, husband of Fahima Pasawiran Pusaka, who chairwoman of Barangay Poblacion 5 in Cotabato City, and a still unidentified tricycle driver, died in the incident.

The Pusaka couple were together in their white Toyota Fortuner when they were attacked by gunmen at a stretch of the Jose Lim Sr. Street in downtown Cotabato City.

Pusaka’s husband and the tricycle driver who was hit by stray bullets were both declared dead on arrival by physicians in a hospital where emergency responders brought them for treatment.

Relatives of the wounded Pusaka have theory that it was her who was the target of their assailants, who had immediately escaped using three getaway motorcycles.

Investigators from Cotabato City’s Police Precinct 1 stated in an initial report to the city’s police director, Col. Jibin Bongcayao, that two men in a motorcycle shop close to the scene also sustained bullet wounds in different parts of their bodies.

Bongcayao, said their investigators and intelligence agents have enlisted the support of the relatives of the wounded barangay leader and city officials in trying to identify the men who perpetrated the atrocity.

Photo shows a police forensic operative sifting through the scene of Tuesday’s deadly ambush in Cotabato City.