MILF rebels free 5 Cotabato villagers

COTABATO CITY – Moro rebels set free yesterday five villagers they used as human shields to forestall pursuit operations after looting villages in a hinterland area in Esperanza, Sultan Kudarat Friday.

Col. Julieto Ando, spokesman of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division, said guerillas of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front abandoned the captives hours after they were snatched from Barangay Marquez, a farming community in Esperanza.

“They are now back in Barangay Marquez,” Ando told reporters.

Police investigators said the kidnapped-villagers – Roy Martin and his wife Shiela, their two children, and a farmer named Jun Bello – were taken at gunpoint by the MILF rebels as they fled into a nearby hinterland after they showed force at Barangay Marquez and robbed residents there of their valuables and farm animals.

Chief Superintendent Felicisimo Khu, a directorate staff of the Region 12 police command, said the MILF guerillas that plundered Barangay Marquez came from Maguindanao province, apparently followers of renegade Ameril Ombra Kato.

“We already sent enough policemen to the area to help soldiers there protect villages from ‘foraging missions’ by renegade MILF forces,” Khu told Catholic station dxND, a radio outfit of the Oblate congregation.

The Friday kidnapping by MILF rebels of five villagers in Esperanza was Central Mindanao’s second in just seven days.

MILF militants also snatched last week in Alamada, North Cotabato three farmers after plundering a hinterland barangay there.

The rebels, who carted away more than 30 water buffaloes farmers use in plowing their corn farms, set their three hostages free when they sensed that responding soldiers and policemen balked from chasing them so as not to endanger the lives of the captives.

Contrary to other reports, police and military commanders in Central Mindanao region said yesterday that no civilians were abducted by the renegade members of separatist MILF Friday morning in a remote village in Sultan Kudarat province.

Reports said more or less 100 heavily armed suspected MILF fighters coming from the nearby Ma­guindanao province raided Barangay Marquez in Esperanza town Friday morning and snatched a village official and four other residents before withdrawing to the jungles there.

The rebels reportedly used the civilians as “human shield” against the pursuing police and military forces.  

“Hindi totoo yan. Saan ba galing yan? Walang nangyaring ganyan,” said Sultan Kudarat police director Senior Superintendent Benhur Mongao when asked by The STAR yesterday about the said reports.

Mongao clarified that no village was attacked by the rogue MILF rebels in Esperanza town on Friday but admitted some reported sightings of rebels in some of the town’s barangays.

“They were just passing in Barangay Marquez. No attack and abduction took place there,” Mongao said in a long distance interview.

Colonel Marlo Salazar, commander of the Army’s 601st Brigade based in Barangay Kalandagan in nearby Tacurong City, also belied civilians’ abduction in the said locality.

“Negative ang report na yan,” Salazar said.