| MILF rebels raid Army
detachment |
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CAMP SIONGCO, Maguindanao —
Five guerrillas were killed while three others were
wounded when marauding Moro Islamic Liberation Front
(MILF) rebels, unfazed by the presence in Central
Mindanao of international ceasefire monitors, raided
an Army detachment in Mamasapano, Maguindanao at
dawn yesterday.
Local officials said three of the slain MILF rebels
were identified as members of a local guerrilla
force implicated in kidnapping and extortion
activities in Mamasapano and nearby towns.
The fighting interrupted a two-year-old truce that
was being observed by more than 60 international
military monitors from Brunei and Malaysia.
Col. Franklin del Prado, civil-military relations
chief of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division, said the
hostilities first erupted in Barangay Nabundas,
Mamasapano when about a hundred MILF guerrillas
surrounded a roadside Army detachment and opened
fire with assault rifles and B-40 anti-tank rockets.
Citing reports from local religious leaders and
barangay officials in Mamasapano, Del Prado said
that as the militiamen and civilian volunteers were
trading shots with their attackers, another group of
MILF rebels ambushed a convoy of responding Army
combatants and policemen in nearby Barangay Lopok in
the same town.
"The firefights spread fast to other villages
because instead of restraining themselves, MILF
rebels from nearby areas reinforced their companions
who provoked the hostilities," Del Prado said.
Maguindanao Gov. Datu Andal Ampatuan, chairman of
the provincial peace and order council, said they
have been receiving reports of civilian evacuations
from the surroundings of the villages the MILF
attacked.
Eid Kabalu, spokesman of the MILF, was quick to tell
reporters that their central leadership has nothing
to do with the hostilities in Mamasapano.
Kabalu said the group that raided the militia
detachment was composed of relatives of two MILF
members, Abdullah Hadji Jamil and Mohammidin
Abdullah, who both disappeared last month in
Mamasapano.
Kabalu said the cadavers of Jamil and Abdullah were
both found somewhere in the same municipality days
after they went missing.
Kabalu said the relatives of the slain rebels have
tagged a local policeman named Rudy Mungkas and a
certain Datu Kaka Masukat, commander of a big CVO
unit in Mamasapano, as those behind the "mysterious
deaths" of the duo.
Del Prado said three militiamen were wounded in the
running gunbattles in Barangay Nabundas.
The International Monitoring Team, which has a
24-hour operations center in Cotabato City, and
members of the government and MILF’s peace panels
started investigating before noontime yesterday the
circumstances of the firefights that rocked
Mamasapano.
Local officials said the MILF has instigated more
than a dozen attacks and harassment of populated
areas in the neighboring towns of Mamasapano,
Shariff Aguak, Datu Unsay Ampatuan, Datu Saudi
Ampatuan, all in the second district of Maguindanao
since January. |
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