Heavy rains flood Central Mindanao

COTABATO CITY — Heavy rains since last week continued to swell the Rio Grande de Mindanao and Allah river, both traversing dozens of towns in Central Mindanao, inundating more farming communities and hampering rehabilitation efforts in areas affected by recent military-rebel hostilities in the region.

Reports reaching Maguindanao’s provincial disaster coordinating council said in the second district of the province alone, 32 barangays have been flooded, forcing hundreds of villagers to flee to safer grounds.

At least 12 barangays in the neighboring towns of Pigkawayan and Libungan, both in North Cotabato, were hit over the weekend by flashfloods that swept away more than a dozen houses and displaced about a hundred families, now confined in temporary relief sites inside school campuses.

Evacuation centers in Pikit, North Cotabato and Pagalungan, Maguindanao have also been flooded, worsening the plight of hundreds of evacuees driven from their homes by recent clashes between soldiers and fighters of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

Datu Haron Bandila, assistant secretary of the Department of Agriculture in the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao, said latest reports reaching his office stated that 60 percent of farming communities in the town of Kabuntalan in Maguindanao have also been flooded as a result of the overflowing, due to torrential rains, of the tributaries of big rivers traversing villages in the area.

"We have also been receiving reports that low-lying barangays in the neighboring towns of Datu Odin Sinsuat and Talayan have also been hit by floods," Bandila said. — John Unson