2 wounded in crossfire over land feud

MAGUINDANAO, Philippines - Two Moro peasants were seriously wounded on Sunday in a crossfire involving two heavily armed ethnic Iranon groups fighting for control of patches of lands in Buldon, Maguindanao.

In a statement Monday, the Buldon municipal police identified the victims as Munir Renghis, 32, and Akmad Abug, 28, who sustained gunshot wounds in different parts of their bodies.

The victims were plowing their lands in Barangay Pulayakan in north of Buldon when members of two feuding Moro clans arrived and immediately traded shots using M14 and M16 assault rifles.

Renghis and Abug were hit by stray bullets even before they could run away.

The two groups scampered away after sensing that responding local officials and policemen were closing in.

Investigators declined to identify, meantime, the clans that figured in the encounter pending the amicable settlement of the conflict. 

The wounded farmers were rushed by barangay officials to a hospital for medication.

Buldon, a predominantly Iranon area, and its neighboring Parang, Barira and Matanog towns, also in Maguindanao, accounts for most of still unresolved clan wars in the province.

Chief Superintendent Noel Delos Reyes, regional police director of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, said emissaries are now trying to convince the two clans that clashed in Barangay Pulayakan to reconcile before local clerics and traditional Moro leaders.