ZAMBOANGA CITY: Undercover police, backed by soldiers, shot dead a Malaysian drug dealer and his Filipino cohort in a sting operation at a coastal village in the southern Philippine province of Tawi-Tawi over the weekend, officials said on Sunday.

Police BGen. Remus Medina, chief of the Drug Enforcement Group, said the weekend fighting killed Hari Man bin Sabtula, a native of Sabah, and Nadzmil Ladja, a resident of Sitangkai town in Tawi-Tawi, after they resisted arrest and engaged the policemen and soldiers in a gunfight in Pahut village in the capital town of Bongao.