Hunt for perpetrators of South Upi atrocities continue
Mindanao Armed Conflict • 12:00 PM Wed Jan 6, 2021
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By:
John M. Unson
COTABATO CITY --- The Army’s 6th Infantry Division mobilized more soldiers to run after the local terror group behind the burning of 13 houses and the ambush of a convoy of relief workers in South Upi, Maguindanao last week.
Major Gen. Juvymax Uy, commander of 6th ID, told reporters Wednesday the gunmen who attacked Barangay Itaw on New Year’s Eve and ambushed three days later a group of local officials and municipal relief workers on their way to the town center from the area are members of the Dawlah Islamiya.
The Dawlah Islamiya is also known as the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters that has been trying to sabotage the peace process between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, whose revolutionary figurehead, Ahod Ebrahim, is now an appointed chief minister of the newly-established Bangsamoro region.
“Our operation to hunt them down has not stopped even as the situation in South Upi has started returning to normal,” Uy said.
About a thousand families were displaced by the hostilities in the adjoining Barangays Itaw and Pandan.
A villager was killed while three others were badly wounded when gunmen shot vehicles carrying local officials, among them South Upi Mayor Reynalbert Insular, while motoring through a farm-to-market road in Barangay Pandan from an outreach mission for conflict-stricken Barangay Itaw residents.
Uy, also in-charge of the Army-led anti-terror Joint Task Force Central, said personnel of units under their 603rd Brigade have since been running after the culprits in the arson attacks in Barangay Itaw and in the ambush incident that also sent villagers running for their lives.
Uy said their intelligence units and the police are now identifying the gunmen behind the South Upi atrocities for prosecution.