LANAO DEL SUR, Philippines — Islamic militants have been hiding in Mount Cararao, not in Buldon town in Maguindanao, long before the May 23 outbreak of the conflict in Marawi City, officials said early Saturday.
Mount Cararao, a vast swath of highland fields with scattered rainforests, separates the provinces of Maguindanao and Lanao del Sur, both in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.
Commanders of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front who belong to the Iranun tribe said on Saturday morning that the militants are nowhere near Buldon, which is located in the first district of Maguindanao.
Senior Superintendent Agustin Tello, director of the Maguindanao provincial police, said on Saturday that the municipal police office in Buldon has not reported of any presence of Maute terrorists in the municipality.
“Possibly they are in Mount Cararao which is at the border of Butig, Lanao del Sur and Buldon, Maguindanao,” Tello said.
President Rodrigo Duterte had said in a speech at the Eastern Mindanao Command Headquarters in Davao City Friday that he is apprehensive of a spillover of the hostilities in Marawi City to Buldon owing to the presence there of unidentified armed men.
He said he had thought of lifting martial law in Mindanao, which is to last until December 31, but changed his mind due to the security issues besetting Buldon.
Members of the Buldon municipal police office told reporters on Saturday that it is in Mount Cararao where suspected members of the Maute terror group were spotted.
An Iranun farmer, Limon Mandiga Botari, said he is doubtful the terrorists would try to get close to Buldon.
MILF members and armed villagers in Buldon killed five Maute terrorists in an encounter on Dec. 8, 2016 with a group that tried to bring into the municipality nine companions wounded in prior encounters with soldiers in Butig.
The Iranun community who foiled the attempted incursion then of Maute terrorists in Buldon was led by Commander Quiqada, a senior MILF official in the municipality.
Two followers of Commander Quiqada were wounded in the incident, which the MILF even reported to the government’s ceasefire committee and the Malaysian-led International Monitoring Team.
The government’s ceasefire committee and the foreign peacekeeping contingent, comprised of soldiers from Malaysia, Indonesia and Brunei and civilian conflict resolution experts from Japan, Norway and the European Union, are helping enforce all interim security compacts between the MILF and Malacañang.
Local officials in Maguindanao’s Matanog and Barira towns, both close to the border of the province with Lanao del Sur said they are certain that Duterte was referring to Mount Cararao when he spoke of sightings of Islamic militants in Buldon.
It was in Butig, located in the first district of Lanao del Sur, where the Maute terror group, operating in the fashion of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, first emerged in 2014.
The founders of the militant group, siblings Omar and Abdullah Maute, belong to a Maranao clan in Butig that is known for its deep-seated animosity with Dimnatang Pansar, the incumbent mayor there.
“We were surprised with President Duterte’s announcement that there is brewing tension in Buldon in relation to the crisis in Marawi City. He could be referring to Mount Cararao, not Buldon,” said an Iranun town official.
The official, who asked not to be identified for security reasons, is one of local leaders Maguindanao Gov. Esmael Mangudadatu had tasked to validate the reported sightings of Maute terrorists at Mount Cararao.
Mangudadatu is chairman of the inter-agency provincial peace and order council, whose members include officials of the 36-member Maguindanao league of Mayors.
Local MILF commanders confirmed to reporters on Saturday that they were alerted Wednesday by Iranun peasants propagating corn and upland rice varieties near Mount Cararao on the presence of no fewer than 50 Maranao-speaking gunmen in the area.
“They are too far away from Buldon. They are just there at Mount Cararao, which is nearer to Lanao del Sur,” an Iranun elder, Madzid Condaw, told reporters in the local dialect.
Von Al-Haq, spokesman of the MILF’s Bangsamoro Islamic Armed Forces, denied on Saturday morning having confirmed that there are 100 ISIS-inspired militants in Buldon.
He told reporters that their commanders in Buldon, just like the local police, have not reported about any presence of ISIS-inspired militants in the municipality.
Members of the MILF’s Task Force Ittihad have been fighting militants in a third faction in the outlawed Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters in Maguindanao’s adjoining Datu Piang, Salibo and Sharif Saidona towns since August 1.
The hostilities between the two groups erupted after six botched attempts by the militants, led by Abdulmalik Esmael, to hoist the ISIS flag inside government-acknowledged MILF enclaves in Maguindanao.
The police and key MILF sources said 12 members of Task Force Ittihad have been killed in skirmishes in the past four weeks that also exacted 23 fatalities from the BIFF.
Chief Superintendent Reuben Theodore Sindac, director of the Police Regional Office-ARMM, said on Saturday that personnel of the municipal police in Buldon will immediately report to him any unusual security situation in the area.
“We have not received any report yet on the purported presence of Maute terrorists there so far,” Sindac said.
The Army’s 6th Infantry Division also clarified on Saturday, through radio stations in Cotabato City, that there is no presence of Maute terrorists in any barangay in Buldon.