Indian trader robbed, killed in S. Philippines

NEW DELHI - Unidentified robbers shot and killed an Indian trader in the southern Philippine city of Mindanao on Wednesday.

The Xinhua news agency quoted police, as saying that the attack on Satinder Singh in a busy street in the Mindanao city of Panabo underscored the risk faced by foreign nationals doing business in the country’s south.

Here, Muslim and leftist rebels and armed thugs roam freely in a region awash with more than a million unlicensed guns, police said.

Singh, a resident of Koronadal City, also in Mindanao, and owner of a lending company that catered to small entrepreneurs, was collecting money from vendors in the city’s market when attacked by armed men at around 12 p.m., Superintendent Alexander Serrano, city police chief, told Xinhua.

Serrano said the suspects took the victim’s collection amounting to 26,000 pesos (565 U.S. dollars) and his motorcycle before speeding off to an unknown direction.

Police said they are looking into robbery as the motive of the killing.

The attack in Panabo came less than a month after armed thieves also shot and killed two Indian moneylenders in Trento town, Agusan del Sur province, some 130 kilometers north of Panabo. (ANI)