The shooting occurred shortly after polls began. Three security guards were killed on Monday (May 9) in the southern Philippines when gunmen opened fire at a polling station in Buluan municipality on the island of Mindanao, police said. At the same time, millions of people went to the polls for the general elections.
Filipinos who had come to vote rushed to safety when the shooting began, said the former mayor of Buluan. These people were inside a school, used as a polling station. A fourth guard was injured in the attack, the Maguindanao provincial police spokesman said. LMindanao Island is the refuge multiple armed groups, from communist insurgents to Islamist militants.
Nine injured in another attack
This attack took place after another explosion occurred late Sunday afternoon outside a polling station, still on the island of Mindanao, but in the municipality of Datu Unsay. Nine people were injured in a grenade attack hours before the start of the general elections. According to the police, the nine victims had left their remote mountain villages on foot to go to the municipal hall and vote around 6 a.m. local time on Monday, when all the polling stations in the archipelago opened.
About 67 million Filipinos are called to vote until 7 p.m., or 1 p.m. Paris time, for these general elections, during which the president, the vice-president as well as the deputies, half of the senators, the 81 provincial governors and other local elected officials. Ferdinand Marcos Junior, son of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, is promised by the polls a landslide victory.