Bangsamoro holds historic first parliament elections amid pre-poll violence

In the southern Philippines, a region born from decades of armed struggle and a hard-won peace agreement held its first true parliamentary elections, asking nearly 2.4 million voters to transform a ceasefire into a functioning democracy. The Bangsamoro Autonomous Region — established through a 2014 accord with former Moro Islamic Liberation Front rebels after a conflict that claimed roughly 150,000 lives since the 1970s — was meant on Monday to cross a threshold from interim authority to elected self-governance. Yet the night before polls opened, a shooting in Cotabato City killed three and wo