Bandits behead Midsayap farmer

NORTH COTABATO, Philippines -  Retreating members of the outlawed Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters beheaded a farmer as they escaped from Midsayap town where they  attacked four barangays Monday.

The corpse of the decapitated farmer, 31-year-old Ricarte Dionio, was found by villagers sprawled on a rice field in Barangay Malingao, where bandits holed out for more than 10 hours as they held nine public school teachers hostage and used them as “human shields” to deter pursuing soldiers.

The bandits abandoned the teachers near a boat dock along a river in Barangay Malingao before they fled toward Maguindanao province.

Local officials said Dionio was one of the more than 20 residents the bandits prevented from leaving as they engaged responding soldiers, after laying siege on villages.

Another group of bandits also executed  a villager named Erwin Vinluan, 22, for refusing to help carry their wounded companions as they escaped to the swampy border of Midsayap, North Cotabato and Datu Piang town in the second district of Maguindanao.

Vinluan was asked to kneel at gunpoint, hands behind his head, and shot at close range in the head with an M-16 rifle by one of his captors.

Midsayap Mayor Romeo Araña, chairman of the municipal peace and order council, and Col. Dickson Hermoso, spokesman of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division, both confirmed the beheading of Dionio and the murder of Vinluan.

“The relatives of the victims are grieving, yearning for justice,” Hermoso said.

Hermoso also confirmed that three soldiers, not four as he had announced late Monday, were killed in encounters with BIFF bandits in Midsayap’s adjoining Barangays Pulumugen and Malingao.

Hermoso identified the slain soldiers as Pfcs. Robert Baling, 26, Reynon James Bellares, 23, and Adonis Alejo, 29.

Baling was an organic member of the Army’s 40th Infantry Battalion, which has jurisdiction over Midsayap, while Bellares and Alejo both belonged to the 7th Infantry Battalion, which is based in Pikit, North Cotabato.

Hermoso said three soldiers were also wounded in the ensuing encounters, Sgt. Oscar Gumapac, and Pfcs. Roel Yanting and Marlon Monar, now undergoing medication at a hospital.