Nine soldiers hurt in BIFF retaliatory attacks

MANILA, Philippines —  Nine soldiers were wounded Friday afternoon in separate attacks by bandits in three Maguindanao towns to avenge the arrest of four gunmen and the military’s takeover of two more guerilla lairs in the province earlier the same day.

Local officials have confirmed that the attacks by the brigand Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF) were also meant to intimidate combined civilian and military caregivers.

They wanted to prevent the health personnel from continuing with a planned week-long medical outreach missions for evacuees from areas where the BIFF and soldiers are locked in a face-off since February 28, the officials explained.

The two BIFF hideouts, one located at Barangay Liab, Datu Piang and the other in Dabunayan District in the same town, were found by Army and Marine combatants with the help of community elders, some of them identified with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

The hostilities last Friday erupted about four hours after soldiers took over the two BIFF positions and found in abandoned huts ammunition for assorted firearms, materials for fabricating roadside bombs, and schematic diagrams for electrical circuits of blasting devices for improvised explosives.

Soldiers had also arrested four BIFF gunmen—Aladin Panaydan, 22, Daud Balogat, 23, Ebrahim Oraw, 40, and Abdul Madalidaw, 33—while trying to crawl away from their enclave, where government forces hoisted the Philippine flag at noontime Friday.

The Army's 6th Infantry Division had turned over the four bandits to the police, along with their firearms, a .45 caliber pistol, a World War II vintage Thompson sub-machine gun, mobile phones, live 40 MM shoulder-fire grenades and devices used in setting off roadside bombs from a distance.

Captain Jo-Ann Petinglay, spokesperson of 6th ID, said the firearms and bomb materials recovered from the four BIFF members will be used as evidence in their prosecution by the Maguindanao provincial police.

"They were treated humanely, according to correct procedures. It is the police that will file criminal cases against them," Petinglay said.

The simultaneous attacks by bandits in retaliation for the takeover by soldiers of two more BIFF camps in the second district of Maguindanao was reportedly ordered by Imam Tambako, whose group the military has been running after for more than a week now.

Army and Marine combatants took over Tambako's hideout in Dasikil, a secluded area at the border of Maguindanao's adjoining Mamasapano and Rajah Buayan towns last March 1.

Soldiers also took control of an abandoned BIFF camp in Kitango in southwest of Datu Saudi, also in the second district of the province, two days later.

"Tambako has fled to the eastern side of the Liguasan Marsh along with his followers," said a town councilor, who asked not to be identified for security reasons.

The 220,000-hectare Liguasan Delta, located at the tri-boundary of Maguindanao, Sultan Kudarat and North Cotabato, is a known bastion of rogue Moro rebels.

The source, who admits having relatives in the BIFF, said the group already lost 13 members in encounters with the military since last February 27.

Seven bandits were killed on February 27 when soldiers drove them away from stretches of a national highway straddling through the adjoining Datu Saudi and Datu Unsay towns which they occupied for almost four hours.

Ranking employees of different local government units in towns affected by the BIFF-military strife said Friday's attacks by BIFF bandits were also meant to prevent Army dentists, physicians and employees of the Maguindanao provincial government and the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao health department to push through with joint medical missions for evacuees confined in relief sites in far-flung barangays.

"The medical missions went on smoothly just the same. We heard exchanges of gunshots in areas not so far away from places where we initiated humanitarian missions," said Lynette Estandarte, chief budget officer of the office of Maguindanao Gov. Esmael Mangudadatu.