Mass burial for 27 unidentified Marawi casualties

LANAO DEL SUR, Philippines — Emergency workers on Tuesday buried remains of 27 unidentified 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.

 

Assemblyman Zia Alonto Adiong of the 24-seat Regional Assembly in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao and crisis committee spokesman said Tuesday that forensic experts had collected DNA samples from the 27 bodies 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 at the regional legislature.

 

Adiong said the bodies were transported from a mortuary in Iligan City to the Maqbarah cemetery in Marawi City by military trucks escorted by the provincial rescue and emergency unit and by police investigators.

 

The Westmincom and the Lanao del Sur provincial government jointly facilitated the burial of 27 other cadavers in the same cemetery on July 24.

 

All of the 54 bodies, examined by probers in a private funeral facility in Iligan City, bore gunshot and shrapnel wounds, some in the head and lower torso.

 

Capt. Jo-Ann Petinglay, Westmincom spokesperson, said clerics led the traditional Islamic burial rites.

 

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 hinted that there is uncertainty on whether the unclaimed remains were those of civilians or of 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 the burial 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.

 

Soldiers stood guard during the burial in case of harassment by Maute terrorists.