LANAO DEL NORTE, Philippines — Authorities are not ignoring the threats by the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters to attack Davao City to avenge the deaths of 13 senior members killed by soldiers recently.
The threats were written on chalkboards in classrooms and in the barangay hall of Malagakit in Pigcawayan, North Cotabato where some 300 BIFF bandits laid siege for about nine hours on Wednesday.
“While we doubt the capability of the BIFF to proceed to areas far from central Mindanao to sow terror, our units are not taking chances,” Captain Arvin Encinas, public affairs chief of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division (ID), said on Friday.
The towns in central Mindanao’s adjoining North Cotabato and Maguindanao provinces, where there is BIFF presence, are under the jurisdiction of 6th ID.
A message from Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters who plundered Barangay Malagakit in Pigcawayan, North Cotabato. John Unson
The BIFF gunmen, who raided and looted villages in Barangay Malagakit in Pigcawayan last Wednesday, also destroyed portraits of Duterte they found inside classrooms and in the barangay hall there.
Barangay residents said three bandits were responsible for attacking Duterte graffiti style, accusing him of instigating the conflicts now besetting parts of Mindanao.
‘Kahit saan humingi ng tulong si Duterte hindi niya kami kayang ubusin,” a bandit wrote on the chalkboard in the office of Salvador Almonia Jr., chairman of Barangay Malagakit.
The BIFF bandits who occupied Barangay Malagakit last Wednesday robbed houses and stores and carted away farm animals of peasants whose barns, where they stored rice grains, they also ransacked.
Encinas said attack was not related to the ongoing strife in Marawi City.
He said the atrocity was vengeful banditry, meant to avenge the deaths of more than a dozen senior BIFF members in a series of encounters with Army units in Maguindanao in the past seven weeks.
Local officials said eight bandits were killed while five others were wounded in skirmishes with soldiers that flushed them out of Barangay Malagakit.
A local member of the Citizens Armed Forces Geographical unit, Abraham Kutay, was killed while two other CAFGUs were wounded in the ensuing firefights.