Ceasefire monitors broker truce between rebels, barangay officials

SULTAN KUDARAT, Philippines - Government and Moro ceasefire monitors brokered a truce meant to end confrontations between a group of rebels and barangay officials in Lutayan town in Sultan Kudarat province.

Army Major Carlos Sol, chief secretariat of the government’s Coordinating Committee on Cessation of Hostilities, on Monday said the members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front that figured in hostilities last week with barangay officials and community watchmen in Barangay Bayasong, Lutayan had left to pave the way for the resolution of the conflict.

The rebels, led by Commander Guiamandin, raided a peasant enclave in Barangay Bayasong last week, provoking running firefights with armed barangay officials and a community volunteer security group.

Central Mindanao’s pioneer radio outfit, the Notre Dame Broadcasting Corp., had said in a report that three barangay tanods and the chair of Bayasong, Falcon Bansil, were wounded in the ensuing firefights.

Sol said members of the government-MILF joint ceasefire committee brokered an interim truce between the two groups to stave off escalation of hostilities in Barangay Bayasong. He said the hostilities were only between two local groups and did not in any way involve the MILF as a revolutionary organization.

Local officials said Guiamandin and Bansil are locked in a rido (clan war) sparked by a land dispute and rivalry for control of strategic patches of lands at the border of Buluan town in Maguindanao and Lutayan.

“A ceasefire was declared, which both groups promised to respect, through the combined efforts of the government-MILF joint ceasefire committee, the local government unit in Lutayan, the police and the military,” Sol said.

Sol said the LGU of Lutayan assured to help convince the protagonists to the conflict to reconcile amicably.