COTABATO CITY (April 12, 2026) — Militiamen and soldiers shot and wounded three individuals, riding a vehicle together, they misconstrued as New People’s Army guerillas for recklessly forcing their way through a checkpoint near the town center of T’boli, South Cotabato on Thursday night, April 9.

The incident was preceded by an encounter on Thursday Morning between personnel of the Army’s 603rd Infantry Brigade and NPAs in Barangay Laconon in T’boli that left Anthony Narvasa, secretary of the rebel group’s self-styled Far South Mindanao Region Command, and his female aide, Rosa Kian, dead

Narvasa and Kian were both wanted for multiple murder, multiple frustrated murder, arson, extortion and armed robbery cases pending in different courts in South Cotabato province and in its capital, Koronadal City.

Officials of the South Cotabato Provincial Police Office and employees of the T’boli Municipal Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office told reporters on Saturday that the three persons wounded in what was for them a peculiar incident, Delfin Tan Forod, Arlene Sawan Lambong and Rafael Zunio Francisco, were immediately transported to a hospital for treatment.

Their companion, Alvin Tuan Sacay, a barangay councilor, survived the incident unscathed.

Investigators from the T’boli Municipal Police Station told reporters the four of them were together in a 4×4 rugged terrain vehicle, driven by Forod, who, despite having noticed the presence of members of the Citizens Armed Forces Geographical Unit and soldiers at a roadblock ahead of them, drove through fast.

The CAFGU members and soldiers fired warning shots to compel them to stop but instead of pulling over, they sped away, forcing them to open fire at their vehicle, hitting Forod, Lambong and Francisco in different parts of their bodies.

The municipal police, the CAFGU team and soldiers assigned to different barangays in T’boli were on full alert then owing to threats by companions of the slain Narvasa and Kian to set-off improvised explosive devices in populated areas in the municipality to avenge their demise in a gunfight with combatants of the 603rd Infantry Brigade on Thursday morning.

Major Gen. Jose Vladimir Cagara, commander of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division, told reporters on Saturday that the incident was a tacit case of “miscommunication” that turned haywire and that efforts to put a closure to it are still underway.

Cagara said the troops involved in the incident are now confined to one area, undergoing procedural questioning.

Ethnic T’boli tribal leaders in the municipality, among them members of their multi-sector municipal peace and order council, said they do not blame the soldiers and CAFGU members who shot the victims, apparently provoked by their misbehavior.

Photo show police forensic experts inspecting the vehicle ridden by the three villagers hurt in an unusual incident on Thursday night, April 9, in T’boli, South Cotabato. []