Military gearing up for BIFF attacks on road projects

MAGUINDANAO, Philippines — The military is anticipating more attacks by the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF) which threatened to sabotage road and bridge projects intended to improve the mobility of workers in far-flung areas in Maguindanao province. 

The BIFF, feared for imposing a ruthless justice system in remote areas, is rabidly opposed to arterial road network projects, fearing it would give military tanks and combat vehicles access to their enclaves.

Army mechanized units and BIFF bandits figured in sporadic encounters from Friday until late Saturday in Salibo town in Maguindanao. The fighting sparked by an attack on an equipment depot of a construction outfit building a bridge in Barangay Butilen in the same municipality.

A group of Army bomb disposal experts also came under attack while trying to deactivate a roadside bomb which BIFF members planted along a road leading to the project site.

The bandits also shot with assault rifles the road-building equipment being used in the implementation of the project.

Capt. Jo-Ann Petinglay, spokesperson of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division, said an officer, Capt. Jimmy Amoloy, and his subordinate, Pfc. Donbrich Robles, were wounded in the ensuing firefights.

"They were just slightly wounded and are now out of danger," Petinglay said.

Barangay folks said at least three BIFF gunmen were killed while seven others, five of them adolescents, were wounded in the running gunfights.

The hostilities in Salibo's adjoining Barangays Tee, Butilen, Andabit and Sambolawan waned late Saturday after the bandits retreated to different directions carrying their slain and wounded companions.

The spokesperson of BIFF, Abu Misry Mama, had warned of more attacks on government infrastructure projects in Central Mindanao.

The BIFF, which splintered from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in late 2010, does not recognize the 1997 Agreement on General Cessation of Hostilities between the government and the MILF.