Fatalities mount as Army-Dawlah showdown continue
Mindanao Armed Conflict • 10:30 AM Sat Mar 7, 2020
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By:
John M. Unson
Soldiers are shown in this file photo guarding against Dawlah Islamiya attacks. (John Unson)
COTABATO CITY --- Four Army combatants and nine members of the Dawlah Islamiya were killed in clashes the past four days in the hinterlands of Maguindanao province.
The latest military fatalities, Privates 1st Class Willy Tingzon and Dexter Jay Hierro, both belonged to the Army’s 57th Infantry Battalion.
Tingzon and Hierro were in a contingent of soldiers from different units of the 6th Infantry Division dispatched early Monday to clear the mountains at the border of Ampatuan and Datu Hoffer towns from occupation by Dawlah Islamiya forces.
Two soldiers, Cpl. Albert Serquina and Sgt. Irvin Alberastine of the 40th and 57th Battalions, respectively, and four Dawlah Islamiya bandits, one of them a cleric, perished in the initial spate of clashes from between Monday Morning to noontime Tuesday in Tuayan area at the boundary of both towns.
Ampatuan and Datu Hoffer towns are located in the second district of Maguindanao.
Col. Jose Narciso, commander of the Army’s 601st Brigade, said Saturday a group of soldiers are now helping local government units provide relief and rehabilitation services to dozens of families displaced by the hostilities.
Reports relayed by local leaders in Ampatuan and Datu Hoffer to Narciso and the commander of 6th ID, Major Gen. Diosado Carreon, stated that nine Dawlah Islamiya terrorists were killed by soldiers as they took over the group’s enclaves in Tuayan, a strategic upland area overlooking stretches of the Cotabato-GenSan Highway.
Public school officials under the education ministry of the Bangsamoro region said Saturday the Dawlah Islamiya could have lost more than 10 members, based on feedback by parents of pupils in schools near Tuayan area.
Narciso said the 601st Brigade is now focused on helping LGUs relocate evacuees to areas far from reach by the Dawlah Islamiya, also known as the outlawed Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters operating in the fashion of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
The group, not covered by the peace process between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, is blamed for all bombings in central Mindanao in recent years.