Soldiers pursuing Cotabato jail escapees clash with MILF rebels

COTABATO CITY – Soldiers pursuing convicts who bolted the North Cotabato provincial jail last week clashed with Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) rebels in Mamasapano, Maguindanao at dawn Sunday.

Mamasapano Mayor Acmad Ampatuan, chairman of the municipal peace and order council, said soldiers and militiamen were on their way to verify the reported presence of about a dozen escapees in Barangay Manungkaling in the same town when the rebels blocked their path and opened fire.

Ampatuan said three commanders – Baguindali, Ustadz Goma and Ustadz Abdulsallam – are providing sanctuary to the jail breakers, among them several suspects in recent bombings in Central Mindanao.

“Obviously the operation of the military was not aimed at the MILF, but against the escapees,” Ampatuan told reporters.

The MILF’s website,www.luwaran.com, said combatants from two Army units – the 57th and 64th Infantry Battalions – raided guerrilla enclaves in Barangay Manungkaling covered by artillery fire.

Eid Kabalu, MILF’s spokesman, earlier denied accusations that some radical rebel commanders are coddling the inmates who escaped from the North Cotabato provincial jail.

Forty-eight inmates bolted from their cells when suspected MILF rebels raided the penitentiary, engaged jail guards in a gunbattle and, subsequently, rescued a detained foreign-trained bomber named Datu Ali Sultan.

Kabalu said the raiders could be members of the notorious Pentagon kidnap-for-ransom gang since some of those who escaped from jail were facing kidnapping charges.

The MILF’s website said there was no report of casualties in Sunday’s encounter in Mamasapano, but the incident forced dozens of civilians to evacuate to safer grounds fearing a repeat of the incident.