2 MILF members, militiaman dead, 4 hurt in Maguindanao Sur hostilities
Mindanao Armed Conflict • 15:30 PM Wed Jan 25, 2023
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By:
John M. Unson
COTABATO CITY - Two guerillas and a militiaman got killed while four others were wounded in separate clashes by rival Moro groups in Maguindanao del Sur province between Monday dawn until late Tuesday.
The provincial police and the Army’s 6th Infantry Division separately announced Wednesday that militiaman Ibrahim Abas was killed in the crossfire between rival Moro Islamic Liberation Front members who figured in firefights Monday in Barangay Bakat in Radjah Buayan, Maguindanao del Sur.
Officials of 6th ID and the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region told reporters Abas, a member of the Citizens Armed Forces Geographical Unit, was guiding villagers away from the scene of encounter when protagonists in the conflict shot them with assault rifles.
Captain Joel Lebrilla, chief of the Radjah Buayan municipal police, said Wednesday the hostilities in Barangay Bakat involved members of the MILF’s 106th and 105th Base Commands.
The rival MILF groups are squabbling for control of strategic swaths of lands in Barangay Bakat, according to Lebrilla.
Two MILF guerillas, Muhidin Kasanudin and Makboi Mama, were killed in another gunfight Monday with members of the outlawed Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters in an interior barangay in Mamasapano town in Maguindanao del Sur.
Four other MILF members were wounded in the clash.
Brig. Gen. Oriel Pangcog of the Army’s 601st Infantry Brigade said the slain MILF members and their companions were on their way to the venue of a dialogue with officials of the 33rd Infantry Battalion when they were ambushed by BIFF members led by Abdulkarim Lumbatun in Sitio Amilil in Barangay Tukanalipao, Mamasapano.
Traditional Moro community elders said BIFF members in Mamasapano have been sabotaging the joint community peacebuilding efforts of the MILF, the local police and the military.
The BIFF, operating in the fashion of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, and its allies, the Dawlah Islamiya and the Al-Khobar, are tagged in deadly bombings in central Mindanao in recent years.
The three terrorist groups have a reputation for bombing business establishments and public conveyances if owners refuse to shell out “protection money”on a monthly basis.