Troops withdrawing from Midsayap

MIDSAYAP, North Cotabato – The Army’s 6th Infantry Division has started withdrawing from the scene of Monday’s bloody clashes with Moro Islamic Liberation Front rebels that left 18 MILF guerillas and one soldier dead.

Lt. Col. Julieto Ando, spokesman for the Army’s 6th Infantry Division, said the move is in keeping with an agreement, which also requires the pullout of MILF forces from the area, reached by the joint ceasefire committee Tuesday afternoon.

Brig. Gen. Edgardo Gurrea, chairman of the government’s Coordinating Committee on the Cessation of Hostilities (CCCH), said his group, along with its MILF counterpart and the Malaysian-led International Monitoring Team (IMT), will also establish before the weekend a multilateral security observation outfit each in Barangays Kadigasan and Lumupog, where soldiers figured in a six-hour running battle last Monday.

Gurrea said the outfit, to be named Joint Monitoring Action Team (JMAT), will be manned by representatives from the IMT and the joint ceasefire committee.

"All our efforts are geared towards restoration of normalcy in the two areas," Gurrea said.

Gurrea said one of the concerns now of the joint ceasefire committee is the return of thousands of evacuees displaced in Monday’s fierce gunbattles in Barangays Kadigasan and Lumupog.

The GRP and MILF’s joint CCCH have earlier established a JMAT in Barangay Rangaban and at least three neighboring barangays following the Jan. 25 to 28 bloody military-MILF encounters which forced some 7,000 Muslim and Christian villagers to evacuate to safer ground.

Major Gen. Nehemias Pajarito, commander of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division said the body of another guerrilla was discovered Wednesday, raising the number of dead rebels to 18.

Midsayap Mayor Romeo Arana said soldiers have left three villages at the center of the conflict, and that he was overseeing the return of about 4,500 residents who had fled the fighting.

The MILF rebels and the military, which have been observing a 2003 truce despite occasional clashes, have accused each other of initiating the fighting on Monday and Tuesday in Midsayap, 890 kilometers (550 miles) south of Manila.

Von Al-Haq, chairman of the MILF’s CCCH, said members of the front that figured in Monday’s firefight with Army combatants will religiously adhere to the agreement reached by the joint ceasefire committee.

"Let us see how sincere the army is," he said.

He said the fighting occurred in villages on the fringe of the Liguasan marsh, where MILF members moved last month under an agreement to redeploy away from a highway, after clashing with the military in January.

He added that the fighting broke out after soldiers —who had provided security for a US military team on a medical mission over the weekend —encroached into the MILF position, with only 300 meters (1,000 feet) separating the two forces.

Eid Kabalu, spokesman for the MILF, has insisted that the firefights in Barangays Kadigasan and Lumupog could have been avoided had the military not intruded into known guerrilla enclaves in the area.

"Our forces in the area were pushed to the wall and merely fought back after sensing that soldiers were already in front of them," Kabalu told Catholic station dxMS radio in Cotabato City.

Col. Pedro Soria, commander of the Army’s 602nd Brigade, said these claims are "preposterous."

"It was our men that came under attack. There was no way but to fight back, according to prescribed rules of engagement. In the process, the attackers were outmaneuvered by virtually outnumbered soldiers," Soria told reporters.

He said combatants of the 40th IB were positioned in Barangays Kadigasan and Lumupog merely to prevent marauding MILF rebels from getting near Moro communities where they spread gossip about an "impending military operation" to scare civilians and cause massive evacuations.

Soria said soldiers are now focused on the safety of strategic stretches of the highway connecting Midsayap and Datu Piang, Maguindanao, which the MILF forces driven away from Barangays Kadigasan and Lumupog can use as "springboards" for retaliatory attacks.

Pajarito said his subordinate-soldiers here will not have difficulty in adhering to the low-level agreement reached by Gurrea and Al-Haq, his MILF counterpart.

He insisted all of the recent encounters here were provoked by what he described as "incursions" by MILF into supposedly demilitarized farming communities.

"Our soldiers in the field are disciplined and obedient. They do not have problem repositioning away from the two areas where they were attacked by MILF rebels," Pajarito said.

He was pleased to note the soldiers that killed 17 MILF guerrillas in an encounter here the other day have efficiently applied in actual combat what they learned from a two-month soldiery course in a joint RP-US military training in Carmen, North Cotabato last year.

The encounters were in open, newly plowed lands, without anywhere to take cover at all.

Although outnumbered, the soldiers that came under attack managed to put up a good fight by gradually scattering in the open field and, as they traded shots with their attackers, succeeded in positioning at the left flank of the advancing guerrillas.

Most of the slain rebels were felled by US-trained snipers of the 40th IB.

Kabalu, in an interview with dxMS, said only four of the fatalities were bona fide members of the front.

Local officials, among them members of the mult-sectoral, inter-agency municipal peace and order council, said the 17 cadavers recovered from scene were not just clad in combat uniforms with MILF insignias, but had firearms beside them as well.

North Cotabato Gov. Emmanuel Piñol, chairman of the provincial disaster coordinating council, said he has dispatched a team of relief workers to help local authorities attend to the needs of the evacuees. — with AP