18 wounded Mindanao soldiers receive cash assistance

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — Officials had separately provided relief support to a total of 18 soldiers wounded in separate recent hostilities in the provinces of Sultan Kudarat in Region 12 and in Basilan in the Bangsamoro region.

Brig. Gen. Ricky Bunayog, acting commander of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division, on Monday turned over cash assistance to the wounded Sgt. George Tusan and Cpl. Gexter Quinco during a simple rite at the Camp Siongco Hospital in Camp Siongco in Datu Odin Sinsuat, Maguindanao del Norte.

The headquarters of the 6th ID is in Camp Siongco in Barangay Awang in Datu Odin Sinsuat, only about 10 kilometers from Cotabato City, where the regional capitol of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao is located.

The two soldiers, who belong to the 23rd Mechanized Infantry Company of the Army’s 2nd Mechanized Infantry Battalion, were wounded in an encounter two weeks ago with remnants of the now defunct Dawlah Islamiya, led by a certain Commander Basir, in Barangay Sigayan in Lambayong, Sultan Kudarat.

Bunayog and his subordinate-officers in the 6th ID also awarded each of the two soldiers confined to the hospital in Camp Siongco with a Wounded Personnel Medal, in the presence of the medical personnel in the facility.

Radio reports in Central Mindanao on Tuesday stated that the office of Special Assistant to the President Antonio Lagdameo also provided last week with cash assistance each of the troops of the 45^th IB wounded in two separate ambushes, first on October 5 and, subsequently, last October 8, in Tipo Tipo town in Basilan and in nearby Lamitan City in the province, respectively.

The two separate atrocities left 18 soldiers and a militiaman and an innocent 10-year-old boy and his father wounded.  One of the soldiers wounded in the October 5 ambush in Barangay Badja in Tipo-Tipo, Corporal Elmer Lagmay, died in a hospital.

Emissaries of Lagdameo handed over the funds allocated by his office to each of the wounded soldiers right in the wards in the military hospital in the headquarters of the Western Mindanao Command in Zamboanga City, where they are undergoing treatment.

They also facilitated a special cash grant for the widow of Lagmay, according to radio reports.