5 killed in shootout after bus robbery

Six armed men boarded a bus in the Philippine capital Thursday and started robbing passengers, officials said. Three suspects, the bus driver and a passenger were killed.

The robbers boarded the bus in Manila's financial district of Makati, and declared a holdup along the capital's main thoroughfare, Quezon City police director Senior Superintendent Magtanggol Gatdula said.

One of the passengers alerted the police by a mobile phone text message, but when police officers tried to stop the bus at a roadblock, the robbers fatally shot the driver and a passenger, Gatdula said.

The suspects then took three bus passengers hostage and commandeered another vehicle, heading to suburban Valenzuela city with police cars chasing them along the four-lane North Luzon Expressway.

Gatdula said flat tires forced them to stop, and the robbers and hostages ran toward a row of houses, where waiting police officers managed to rescue the three passengers.

The suspects then scaled a wall and seized a dump truck, but three of them were fatally shot by police snipers, Gatdula said. The three other suspects were arrested, he said.