Moro rebs torch school, houses in North Cotabato

CAMP SIONGCO, Maguindanao — Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) rebels burned down a foreign-funded community peace school and several houses and stole more than a dozen farm animals in separate attacks in North Cotabato the other day.

The incidents were preceded by an hour-long firefight between marauding MILF guerrillas and combatants of the Army’s 75th Infantry Battalion at Camp Abubakar in Maguindanao, leaving nine rebels dead and three others wounded.

Camp Abubakar was the MILF’s former major enclave at the boundary of Buldon, Barira and Matanog towns that government troops overran in 2000.

Officials of Pagalungan, Maguindanao said MILF rebels, led by a certain Commander Makadila, first looted the primary peace school in Barangay Inog-og before setting the building, made of indigenous materials, on fire using kerosene and torches.

Foreign grant

Local Muslim residents built the school almost two years ago using grants from the Community and Family Services International (CFSI), which has various peace-building projects in the neighboring towns of Pagalungan and Pikit, North Cotabato.

The CFSI subsidized the food, school supplies and medical needs of Pagalungan children studying in the school, where teachers taught lessons on peace education and cultural and religious solidarity.

The rebels who burned down the school hurriedly retreated to a nearby corn farm after sensing that responding Marines and Army soldiers were starting to close in on them.

Several hours later, another group of MILF guerrillas attacked a secluded farming village in Barangay Ginatilan, Pikit town, setting at least a dozen houses on fire.

This, as other rebels simultaneously raided nearby Barangay Talitay, also in Pikit, and towed a dozen cattle from the yards of farmers who could not fight back because they were unarmed.

Since February, MILF rebels have burned more than a hundred houses of poor Muslim and Christian villagers in Central Mindanao in a spate of attacks that left more than 50 people dead and dozens more wounded.

Tighter security

The Army’s 603rd Infantry Brigade, which has jurisdiction over military units at Camp Abubakar, said it has tightened security following Thursday’s skirmishes.

Military sources said the hostilities erupted when a group of rebels attempted to intrude into a Muslim farming community in Barangay Tugaig, not far from the center of Camp Abubakar, to ransack the village and rob farmers of their work animals.

Soldiers employed MG-520 attack helicopters and two Layang-Layang improvised bombers in driving the rebels away to prevent them from getting close to populated areas at Camp Abubakar.

Village officials have confirmed that nine rebels were killed in the firefight, two of them notorious cattle-rustlers also wanted for extortion and multiple murder.