MANILA, Philippines (Updated 3:07 p.m., May 30) — Clashes between security forces and terrorists in Marawi City since last week have taken the lives of 19 civilians and have displaced thousands.
Around 67,870 people displaced by the fighting are now distributed among 38 evacuation centers, while 16,590 more are staying in the houses of relatives in nearby towns and in Iligan City.
Government and volunteer rescue workers are scrambling to account for 3, 717 villagers stranded in areas where there are still sporadic skirmishes between Islamic State-inspired Maute militants and government forces trying to drive them away from Marawi City.
Gov. Mujiv Hataman of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) told reporters Monday that the number of stranded villagers is based on reports received by monitoring hotlines of their relief and emergency centers in the cities of Marawi and Cotabato.
In a briefing earlier Monday, the Palace said fighting has also left 15 members of the Armed Forces of the Philippines and three police officers dead. Another 61 personnel of the AFP and three from the Philippine National Police have been wounded in the fighting.
The 32-hectare capitol complex of the ARMM, where Hataman’s office has established a Marawi crisis observation outpost, is located southeast of Cotabato City.
The interim emergency response outfits now operating in Marawi City are being managed jointly by the office of Hataman and of the provincial government of Lanao del Sur.
Marawi City is the capital of Lanao del Sur, which has 39 towns, about three of them with a noticeable presence of the Maute terror group, also known as the Dawlah Islamiya Philippines.
“There are 59 more missing persons we are still trying to locate,” Hataman said.
Hataman said the search operations involve Maranaw religious leaders and traditional elders, the police, Army and Marines and combined personnel of the office of Lanao del Sur Gov. Mamintal Adiong, Jr. and ARMM’s Humanitarian Emergency Assistance and Response Team (HEART).
Hataman said 19 civilians were confirmed killed in the hostilities in Marawi City that began on May 23.
He said the bodies of eight of the 19 fatalities were recovered by emergency responders from the Department of Health-ARMM.
“The others were recovered by different government and volunteer rescue teams working round-the-clock since May 23,” Hataman said.
Officials of the Police Regional Office-ARMM (PRO-ARMM) and the Western Mindanao Command (Westmincom) of the Armed Forces of the Philippines said there are strong indications that Maute and Abu Sayyaf terrorists executed most of the slain civilians.
Some victims executed
Some of the bodies were marked “munafiq” by their killers, according to Senior Supt. Oscar Nantes, director of the Lanao del Sur provincial police.
Munafiq is Arabic for hypocrite, the generic tag by Islamic militants for Muslims who do not believe in their interpretation of teachings in the Qur’an to suit their interests.
The Regional Darul Ifta' of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao issued a fatwa, or ruling, in 2015 that "terrorism and mischief cannot be accepted as synonyms for Jihad or one of struggle’s methods because our religion commands us to be compassionate to all beings in the land."
The council said that "Islam cannot approve criminal and terrorist practices, because attacking innocent people, robbing their money unjustly taking their infallible lives, diffusion terror and fear in the hearts of the faithful persons is forbidden in Islam or in our Islamic law."
It said all Muslims should stay away from any criminal acts and must "help each other to inform the people of what is beneficial to achieve the security and stability in the community."
Police investigators said there is a possibility that some of the slain civilians were killed for not being "Muslims" based on the self-styled spiritual standards of the Maute group and the Abu Sayyaf.
Probers are also not discounting the possibility that some of them were killed in the crossfire.
“They don’t usually call Christians munafiq, but kuff’r, which means unbeliever. Munafiq is their label for Muslims who are for them are not religiously professing Islam, like not being able to recite some important verses in the Qur’an, an Army imam, who has relatives in Marawi City, told reporters.
The imam, who is a major in the Philippine Army, said he is convinced that some of those executed by Maute and Abu Sayyaf terrorists as they plundered villages in Marawi City were Muslims.
"This is now being looked into by the police and the military," he said.
Evacuees have confirmed that some Marawi City residents Maute and Abu Sayyaf gunmen prevented from leaving were asked to recite random verses in the Qur’an to determine whether they are Muslims or non-Muslims.
“There are Maranaws who haven’t perfectly memorized the verses they were asked to recite at gunpoint,” a 54-year-old evacuee, Patiok Kasim, said in Filipino, in heavy Maranaw accent.
Looting reported
Major Gen. Carlito Galvez, Jr., commander of Westmincom, said they have confirmation from displaced barangay folk that the Maute and Abu Sayyaf terrorists who attacked Marawi City looted abandoned houses.
Galvez said there is ample number of soldiers now helping the Hataman-led HEART and the rescue teams from the Lanao del Sur provincial government search for missing residents.
Galvez said military trucks are also available for transport of relief supplies to evacuation centers.
Hataman said ARMM personnel are now packing food rations for 150,000 families which they intend to distribute by Wednesday to evacuation sites and to home-based internally-displaced ethnic Maranaws.
The Lanao del Sur provincial government and the HEART distributed last week more than 10 tons of relief supplies to evacuees.