Maguindanao ISIS-inspired group rocked by loyalty issue

MAGUINDANAO --- Four members of an Islamic State-inspired group have reportedly been executed after their leader discovered that their mobile phones contained numbers of contacts with non-Muslim names.Lt. Col. Gerry Besana, spokesman of the anti-terror, Army-led Task Force Central, confirmed on Thursday having received reports from barangay folk about the execution of followers of Esmael Abdulmalik on suspicions they provided the military and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front tactical information that led to the MILF’s takeover of their camp on Wednesday. There are very persistent reports coming in from barangay leaders and local executives in Maguindanao about that, Besana said.Abdulmalik is leader of a third faction in the outlawed Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters and uses the flag of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria as its revolutionary.Members of the municipal peace and order councils in different Maguindanao towns said Abdulmalik’s four followers --- Hamodi, Omar, Rasul and Asraf --- were shot dead one after another after he learned that they sent text messages to contacts indicating their locations in Barangay Tee. The names of those contacts in their mobile phones were not typical Maguindanaon or Muslim names, a local official, one of more than a dozen who confirmed the brutal killings of the four militants, told reporters.They were reportedly executed after the fall of their remaining bastion in Barangay Tee in Salibo following eight hours of running gunfights with pursuing members of the MILF’s Task Force Ittihad.The MILF overrun the last enclave of Abdulmalik’s group in Barangay Tee after six weeks of internecine clashes in the area and in nearby villages in Datu Piang and Sharif Saidona towns in the same province.Senior Supt. Agustin Tello, director of the Maguindanao provincial police, said Thursday that he also received reports purporting the execution of the four followers of Abdulmalik from different sources, among them senior members of prominent Maguindanaon noble clans.Six followers of Abdulmalik were killed in gunfights with MILF Wednesday in Barangay Tee, one of them a militant named Ansari Alimama, a Maranaw from Butig town in Lanao del Sur.Tello said Alimama, an ethnic Maranao, was a senior member of the Maute terror group.Tello said Alimama was a henchman of siblings Omar and Abdullah Maute, founder of the ISIS-inspired Maute group which first emerged in Butig in 2014. We have validated from our contacts in Lanao del Sur that this Alimama hailed from Butig, Tello said.Besana said military units in Maguindanao’s adjoining Salibo, Datu Piang and Sharif Saidona towns have fired artillery at the militants fleeing from Barangay Tee.The MILF launched an offensive against the group of Abdulmalik in August after its botched attempts to hoist the ISIS flag in guerilla enclaves in Maguindanao recognized as peace zones by the national government.The MILF and the government are bound by an interim accord, the 1997 Agreement on General Cessation of Hostilities, to cooperate in neutralizing criminal gangs and terrorists in potential conflict-flashpoint areas in southern provinces.