MILF member killed in encounter with ISIS-inspired group

MAGUINDANAO ---- A member of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front was killed in a gunfight Monday with a group fashioned from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.

The slain MILF member, Adam Abe, was declared dead on arrival at a government hospital in Cotabato City where he was rushed for treatment of gunshot wounds.

Abe was in an MILF group that clashed with gunmen belonging to the outlawed Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters in Barangay Damabalas in Talayan town in Maguindanao on Monday.

MILF members in the barangay were to convince the BIFF gunmen to leave after villages complained about their unusual convergence in the area, but engaged the intruders in a gunfight instead when they resisted.

Barangay leaders said three BIFF bandits were wounded in the ensuing encounter, two of them adolescents.

The MILF and the government are bound to help each other maintain law and order in potential conflict-flashpoint areas based on peace and security compacts reached by both sides during 22 years of negotiations.

Tension has been high between the MILF and the BIFF, whose leaders are all wanted for deadly bombings and other acts of terror in the past six years.

BIFF gunmen killed seven MILF members in 2019 in Shariff Saidona Mustapha, Maguindanao for trying to drive them away from a riverside village in the municipality where they subject residents to collection of “protection money” on periodic basis.