Officials meet to resolve Wao killings

COTABATO CITY -Officials have been trying since Sunday to peacefully resolve a spate of seven related killings over the weekend in Wao town in Lanao del Sur.Among the seven fatalities in the atrocities, which sparked panic among local folks, were children and a pregnant woman.Reports reaching the office here of Gov. Mujiv Hataman of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, chair of the ARMM peace and order council, said the bloody incidents started with the rape and murder of a teenage girl by cattle thieves on Friday.The suspects also killed in a hacking frenzy another child who was watching over family-owned water buffaloes near a river in a hinterland barangay in Wao, a component town of ARMM.Relatives of the victims on Saturday shot houses with assault rifles in another barangay, where the suspects were believed to have come from, instantly killing four villagers, one of them a pregnant woman.The ARMM police reported that one of the eight villagers wounded in the attack died later in a hospital.Hataman said he had ordered the ARMM’s local government department to help Wao Mayor Elvino Balicao address the carnage to avert escalation of animosity among protagonists. The ARMM leadership detests these killings and hopes for a peaceful end to the tension now hounding the municipality of Wao,” Hataman said.Hataman had also instructed the ARMM police to act expeditiously on the Wao killings to prevent possible escalation of vendetta killings in the municipality.In Wao, political leaders, local officials, police and military authorities, have stepped in to restore normalcy in a remote village here following a series of killings that left seven persons dead and seven others wounded.Mayor Elvino Balicao of Wao told DXMS Radyo Bida thata meeting is being held at the town hall between officials of Lanao del Sur PNP, Wao PNP, 45th Infantry Battalion, local leaders, provincial officialsand police and military are meeting in Wao to address massacre incident which stunned the sleepy village of Park Area, about 18 kilometers from the town center.Balicao said police investigation was still going on but all indications showed that Saturday dawn's strafing in Sitio Magampong was related to the murder of two children the day before in nearby Sitio Campo Dos, also in Barangay Park Area.Senior Inspector Erickson Baniaga, Wao police chief, said the relatives of two children, aged 15 and 13, who were killed by hacking and the carabaos they were tending taken by the suspects apparently retaliated.A 9-year-old boy who witnessed the murder of two children told relatives the identities of the suspects and where they fled.The boy personally knew the suspects who fled toward Sitio Magampong, a Maranao community.The next day, a gunman barged in the community and strafed several houses, leaving four persons dead on the spot and wounded eight others. Of the wounded, one expired in the hospital, raising the death toll to seven.Soldiers and policemen were deployed in the village to prevent further violence as residents have evacuated for fear of another violence.Balicao said Lanao del Sur Gov. Mamintal Adiong Jr. went to Lanao to meet with local officials.Balicao refused to consider the incident as a conflict involving Christian and Muslim settlers although he admitted the protagonists belonged to Ilonggo settlers and Maranao villagers.Balicao said the local government unit has extended assistance to the displaced families who are temporarily housed at the town plaza.