6 armed villagers wounded in Basilan ambush

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — Ambushers wounded six men in a rival group in an attack early Saturday in Sitio Lessem in Barangay Bato-Bato in Akbar, Basilan.

The Akbar Municipal Police Station, in an initial report on Saturday to Brig. Gen. Prexy Tanggawohn, director of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region, stated that the wounded Ryan Latip, Abubakar Latip, Jemar Kalang, Husin Kalang, Ajim Jamaluddin and Nasser Algafar were immediately brought by emergency responders to a hospital in nearby Lamitan City for treatment.

Officials of the Akbar Municipal Police Station and the Basilan Provincial Police Office said that the group that attacked the six men is led by two ethnic Yakans, initially identified only as Jemar and Kidyok.

The Akbar MPS, in its report to Tanggawohn, said that the victims, also heavily armed, were on their way to somewhere on foot when their attackers, positioned at one side of a road straddling through Sitio Lessem, shot them with assault rifles.

Although already wounded, the ambush victims managed to return fire, forcing their attackers to scamper away.

Officials of police and Army intelligence units in Basilan told reporters here the two groups are locked in a “rido,” or clan war, related to the earlier abduction of the still missing Jimmy Nani, a relative of Jemar and Kidyok, by companions of the six ambush victims.

Followers of Jemar and Kidyok were tagged in the killing early this week of Nurjan Latip, a former barangay chairman in Caddayan in Akbar, in what is widely perceived by residents of the municipality as a retaliation for the disappearance of Nani.

Basilan Gov. Hadjiman Salliman and officials of the Basilan PPO and the Army’s 101st Infantry Brigade are together initiating the disengagement of the two groups to prevent a repeat of the bloody incident in Sitio Lessem that sent villagers in farming enclaves around running for their lives.