Mamasapano clash shuts down 13 schools

MAGUINDANAO, Philippines - More than 6,000 children in Mamasapano town have temporarily stopped from schooling as a consequence of the January 25 hostilities in the area.

Lawyer Laisa Alamia, regional executive secretary of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), on Tuesday said the incident prompted education officials to shut down 13 schools in Mamasapano, located in the second district of Maguindanao.

Alamia said the parents of the 6,046 affected high school and elementary pupils in Mamasapano had been advised to just let their children stay with them while efforts to restore normalcy in their villages are still underway.

Alamia and his immediate superior, ARMM Gov. Mujiv Hataman, are jointly managing the on-going operation in Mamasapano of the ARMM’s Humanitarian Emergency and Response Team (HEART).

ARMM-HEART workers are now attending to the needs of hundreds of families displaced by the ten-hour encounter in Mamasapano’s adjoining Barangays Inog-og, Mangapang and Tukanalipao between members of the police’s Special Action Force and guerillas of the 105th Base Command of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

Alamia said they are also validating now a report from the field stating that there is a certain Mohammad Ambilang, also reportedly killed in the crossfire, but whose name has not been included yet in their official list of civilian fatalities.

“There is a way to confirm that based on internationally accepted standard procedures and in coordination with duly constituted organizations and international volunteer entities now helping resolve the incident peacefully,” Alamia said.

The ARMM-HEART had earlier confirmed, after an extensive validation, that four villagers, Badrudin Langalan, a pre-school child named Sarah Pananggulon, Murshid Hashim, and Omar Dagadas, died after having been hit by stray bullets as the SAF-MILF encounter ensued.

Workers of the ARMM-HEART, among them ethnic Maguindanaons from the second district of Maguindanao, on Monday lambasted certain Moro-led non-government organizations spreading reports that some male civilians were found dead inside a mosque and in surrounding farms in the scene of the firefights, hogtied with bullet wounds in their heads.

Lawyer Kirby Abdullah, who is Hataman’s assistant regional secretary for Maguindanao province, appealed to the public to refrain from spreading rumors and speculations on the exact number of SAF, MILF and civilian fatalities in the January 25 hostilities in Mamasapano.

Abdullah said one of the main concerns now of the regional government and the office of Maguindanao Gov. Esmael Mangudadatu is how to immediately restore normalcy in Mamasapano to hasten the return of evacuees to their enclaves and for local schools to resume classes.