Bandits attack Army outpost in Cotabato

NORTH COTABATO , Philippines   â€“ Marauding members of the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF) attacked an Army detachment in Midsayap town this province late Wednesday, and tried but failed to get close to costly road construction equipment that they planned to set on fire.

Although outnumbered, combatants of the Army’s 40th Infantry Battalion at a roadside detachment in Barangay Ulandang, Midsayap managed to drive the bandits away after a 20-minute firefight, wounding five of them.

While the BIFF bandits were trading shots with soldiers, another group tried to get near the equipment owned by a private firm constructing farm-to-market roads, parked several meters away, but the soldiers fired 40-mm grenades at them.

Barangay officials said the bandits left plastic containers filled with gasoline and torches made of dried palm leaves as they fled in haste.

Col. Dickson Hermoso, public affairs chief of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division based in Datu Odin Sinsuat, Maguindanao, said military units in Central Mindanao remain on full alert due to possible retaliatory attacks from the BIFF for its heavy losses in last week’s spate of encounters in Pikit, North Cotabato and at the boundary of Saidona and Datu Piang towns in Maguindanao.