27 more unidentified fatalities in Marawi conflict laid to rest

LANAO DEL SUR --- Emergency workers on Tuesday buried 27 more unidentified cadavers of people killed in gunfights in Marawi City.The mass burial was facilitated jointly by the Western Mindanao Command and the Lanao del Sur provincial crisis management committee.Committee spokesman Assemblyman Zia Alonto Adiong of the 24-seat Regional Assembly in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao said Tuesday that forensic experts had collected DNA samples from the 27 human remains that can be matched with specimens from claimants. Each of their graves was marked for identification purposes, said Adiong, representative of Marawi City and the first district of Lanao del Sur to the ARMM law-making body.Adiong said the cadavers were transported from a mortuary in Iligan City to theMaqbarah cemetery in Marawi City by military trucks escorted by the provincial rescue and emergency unit and police investigators.The WestMinCom and the Lanao del Sur provincial government jointly facilitated the burial of 27 other cadavers on July 24 in the same cemetery.All of the 54 human corpses, examined by probers in a private funeral facility in Iligan City, bore gunshot and shrapnel wounds, some in the heads and lower torso.Captain Jo-Ann Petinglay, a senior information staff of WestMinCom, said Maranao clerics led Tuesday’s traditional Islamic burial rite for the 27 cadavers buried at the Maqbarah cemetery in Barangay Papandayan.The cemetery is owned by the provincial government of Lanao del Sur. The same burial ceremony was done for the cadavers buried in the same ground last July, Petinglay said.Adiong and Petinglay both insinuated that there is uncertainty on whether the unclaimed human remains were those of civilians, or members of the Maute terror group. Islam has strong teachings obliging Muslims to give decent burial to the dead in dire situation regardless of religions and races and that is done in the Islamic context of universal love, fraternalism and respect for humanity, Adiong said.Petinglay said Tuesday’s burial rite was witnessed by representatives from the WestMinCom and the provincial government, forensic experts from the police’s Scene of Crime Operatives, and the Police Regional Office-ARMM.Personnel of the Lanao del Sur rescue and emergency unit buried the 27 cadavers while soldiers stood guard in the surroundings, anticipating harassment by Maute terrorists.