Manila (dpa) – Suspected communist rebels kidnapped and killed a town mayor who was a former guerrilla and his son in the southern Philippines, the military said Tuesday.
Mayor Dario Otaza, 53, and his 27-year-old son Daryl were abducted from their house in Butuan City, 800 kilometres south of Manila, on Monday evening.
Their bodies were found on Tuesday morning by troops pursuing the kidnappers, said Lieutenant Aurelio Balabad, a regional military commander.
“Their bodies were tied together,” he added. “They sustained multiple gunshot wounds in different parts of their body.”
Otaza, mayor of Loreto town in Agusan del Sur province, was a former member of the communist New People’s Army who surrendered in 1986.
He became mayor of Loreto in 2013, after which the rebels accused him of torture, intimidation and a reign of terror in the town.
The government condemned the murder, noting that Otaza had been a development partner since he left the armed insurgency.
Communist rebels have been fighting against the government since the late 1960s, making it one of the longest-running leftist insurgencies in Asia.
