Tension between enemies MILF, BIFF escalating

MAGUINDANAO --- Tension between a local terror group and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front worsened after a video showing a terrorist executing an MILF member wounded in a clash circulated Sunday.

The mobile phone footage showed how a member of the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters, operating in the fashion of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, repeatedly shot in the head an MILF fighter hurt in an encounter last week in Shariff Saidona Mustapha town in Maguindanao.

Seven MILF members were killed in last week’s incident in Shariff Saidona Mustapha.

The gunfight erupted when BIFF gunmen attacked a group of MILF members in a riverside farming enclave in an isolated barangay in the municipality, sparking an hour-long running gunfight that dislocated hundreds of villagers.

There is a deep-seated animosity between one of three factions in the BIFF, the one led by radical cleric Abu Toraife, and the MILF due to its overt support to efforts of the police and the military to neutralize Toraife and his followers.

The two other BIFF factions, one led by Imam Karialan and the other by Imam Bongos, are not hostile to the MILF and have even reportedly signified readiness to return to mainstream society and support the front’s peace process with Malacañang if given chance.

The MILF is helping the Army’s 6^th Infantry Division guard against BIFF attacks in keeping with its two peace compacts with Malacañang --- the 2012 Framework Agreement on Bangsamoro and, subsequently, the 2014 Comprehensive Agreement on Bangsamoro.

No fewer than 15 MILF members were killed two years ago in anti-BIFF offensives in towns along central Mindanao’s 220,000-hectare Liguasan Delta, where ISIS-inspired militants have makeshift enclaves where they fabricate powerful improvised explosive devices.

Local officials are barangay officials are convinced the MILF will avenge the deaths of its seven members who perished in last week’s hostilities with the BIFF.