MAGUINDANAO, Philippines - At total of 8,312 families from five Maguindanao towns have relocated to safer areas for fear of getting trapped in the crossfire between government forces and the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF).
Marine and Army combatants have been pursuing BIFF bandits in several towns in the second district of Maguindanao since last weekend.
Also target of the law enforcement operation of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division and units of the 1st Marine Brigade are foreign-trained bomb maker Abdul Basit Usman and his five cohorts, three of them Indonesians and a “chemist” who has Middle Eastern features.
A Muslim preacher in Dasikil, a secluded district in Mamasapano town in the second district of Maguindanao, however, said the Arab-looking man could either be a Pakistani or an Afghan since the person could not speak Arabic fluently and was overheard many times talking to someone over a mobile phone in a different language.
"He helped 'Teng' and 'Ibs' train people how to make improvised bombs in Mamasapano for about four years,” the source, who asked not to be identified, said in the Maguindanaon vernacular, apparently referring to Usman and slain Malaysian terrorist Zulkifli bin Hir, alias Marwan.
Usman and Marwan were known in their lair in Sitio Inog-og in Barangay Pidsandawan in west of Mamasapano as Teng and Ibs, respectively.
Reports reaching the Humanitarian Emergency Assistance and Response Team (HEART) of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao said tension has been high in Maguindanao’s adjoining Sharif Saidona, Mamasapano, Datu Unsay, Sharif Aguak, Rajah Buayan, Datu Hofer, Datu Saudi and Datu Salibo towns, where government forces are now searching for BIFF forces.
More than 5,000 villagers were displaced when BIFF bandits blocked last week three strategic stretches of the Cotabato-Gen. Santos Highway in Datu Unsay and Datu Saudi towns and flagged down private and passenger vehicles.
Responding Army combatants and members of the 6th Marine Battalion pushed the bandits away and re-opened the portions of the highway BIFF bandits occupied after three hours of clearing operations.
Seven BIFF gunmen were killed while two Marines and an Army combatant were wounded in the ensuing firefights.
Laisa Alamia, executive secretary of ARMM, said workers of the HEART on Sunday extended relief and rehabilitation services to evacuees now housed in relief sites in Mamasapano.
A Marine contingent, backed by V-300 combat vehicles, is now positioned at Mamasapano, ready to launch an offensive against the BIFF.
HEART workers had earlier served thousands of evacuees from villages along the Liguasan Delta in Maguindanao’s Pagalungan town, which BIFF bandits thrice raided more than a week ago.
The HEART's rescue and relief groups are comprised of volunteers from the ARMM’s health, social welfare and public works departments.
Mayor Zamzamin Ampatuan of Rajah Buayan said some 300 families from barangays in Mamasapano on Friday evacuated to Barangay Bakat in his municipality for fear of confrontations between BIFF forces and soldiers now running after them.
"At least 206 of these evacuees are children and elderly," Ampatuan said.
Ampatuan said the evacuees abandoned their villages in Mamasapano and moved to Rajah Buayan for fear of getting trapped in BIFF-military encounters.
Captain Jo-Ann Petinglay, spokesperson of the Army's 6th ID, said the on-going operation against the BIFF is only a calibrated "police action," meant to neutralize the group to prevent its members from attacking hapless peasant enclaves, from blocking highways and from setting off improvised bombs in public terminals, markets and buses.
Petinglay said all of the military's punitive actions against the BIFF are coordinated closely with the joint ceasefire committee of the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.
The BIFF, led by radical clerics feared for their enforcement of a ruthless Taliban-style justice system in areas where they operate, is not covered by the July 1997 Agreement on General Cessation of Hostilities between the government and the MILF.