Marawi is now ghost town as hostilities rage on

LANAO DEL SUR --- Marawi City is now a ghost town but still noisy due to recurring clatters of gunfire and explosions in barangays where militants and soldiers are locked in a showdown.Gov. Mujiv Hataman of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, chairman of ARMM’s regional peace and order council, said Friday residents of Marawi City have abandoned their homes for fear of getting trapped in the crossfire. Marawi City is now a ghost town. People have evacuated to safer areas, Hataman said.Hataman said rescuers and relief workers from the ARMM government and the office of Lanao del Sur Gov. Bedjoria Soraya Alonto-Adiong have rescued thousands of residents from the conflict-stricken barangays in the past two days. Thousands have evacuated early on, he said.Lanao de Sur Vice Governor Mamintal Adiong, Jr. told this news outfit at about 6and00 p.m. Friday that more that 80 percent of residents in Marawi City have fled to Iligan City and nearby towns in Lanao del Sur.President Rodrigo Duterte on Friday visited Iligan City and met with officials of different agencies involved in outreach missions for thousands of evacuees from Marawi City.Duterte was quoted in radio reports as saying that he will flex his authority in addressing the security problems besetting Marawi City.Hataman and Adiong agreed during a meeting at the provincial capitol in Marawi City on Friday afternoon to cooperate in extending relief and rehabilitation services to displaced residents.Marawi City is the capital of Lanao del Sur, a component province of ARMM.Hataman said rescue and relief workers are doing their best to locate missing people reportedly abducted by Maute gunmen after the trouble in Marawi City erupted on Tuesday afternoon.Efforts to locate more than a dozen missing people, among them a policeman and a Catholic priest, are still underway.Lawyer Laisa Alamia, executive secretary of ARMM, said six male adolescents, some of them with shrapnel wounds, were rescued from a combat scene by relief workers at past 4and00 p.m. Friday.They were caught in the crossfire, Alamia said.She also confirmed that hundreds of students trapped in the campus of the Mindanao State University have safely been relocated to a neutral ground. Our concern now is how to extricate many villagers who can’t leave their barangays because of the on-going encounters there.Alamia said rescue workers cannot get through to the barangays where there are skirmishes. We are hoping there would be a lull in fighting so we can relocate those trapped in the crossfire away from the scenes of the encounter, she said.