Philippine flag flies over North Cotabato village after BIFF attack

NORTH COTABATO, Philippines — Soldiers on Thursday raised the Philippine flag in Barangay Malagakit in Pigcawayan town after a nine-hour siege by members of the outlawed Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters.

It took soldiers and militiamen a long time to regain control of the barangay due to the captivity of 31 residents the bandits used as human shields to forestall clearing operations.

The BIFF gunmen, led by Abunawas Damiog, Abu Saiden and Salahudin Hassan, also destroyed religious statues in a Catholic chapel and robbed abandoned houses and stores as they occupied Barangay Malagakit.

The bandits also ransacked the barangay hall and a nearby government health clinic.

The barangay chairman of Malagakit, Salvador Almonia, Jr., said on Thursday that the bandits attacked from the swampy boundary of central Mindanao’s adjoining Maguindanao and North Cotabato provinces.

“They dispersed into smaller groups and immediately surrounded the barangay after we blocked their route and shot them with our rifles,” said Almonia, who carries a vintage .30-cal M2 Carbine rifle.

Almonia, who leads a 30-member barangay volunteer militia, said the bandits destroyed the portraits of President Rodrigo Duterte they found inside government buildings and the classrooms that they looted.

He said the bandits robbed abandoned houses and even shot with assault rifles the pigs raised in backyard pens of farmers.

Farmers said the bandits also took rice grains kept in their barns.

Brig. Gen. Manolo Samarita, commander of the Army’s 602nd Infantry Brigade, said all of the villagers held hostage by BIFF bandits had been accounted for, now in makeshift relief sites in safer areas.

“This incident is not in any way related to the hostilities in Marawi City. This attack was a diversionary attack meant to ease the pressure and hardships brought about by the continuing purge by the military of BIFF forces in Maguindanao province,” Samarita said.

Government forces have killed 11 senior BIFF members in Maguindanao in one encounter after another in the past three weeks.

Community elders, among them members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front residing in nearby Barangay Simsiman, Pigcawayan said eight BIFF members were killed in Wednesday’s skirmishes that dislocated more than a thousand villagers.

A local member of the Citizens Armed Forces Georaphical Unit, Abraham Kutay, was killed in the firefights that left two other militiamen, Angelo Verona and Resty Segundara, wounded.

Evacuees said no fewer than nine BIFF bandits sustained bullet wounds in the skirmishes.

The office of North Cotabato Gov. Emmylou Taliño-Mendoza and the municipal government of Pigcawayan are now attending to the needs of hundreds of families displaced by the BIFF attack.