Manila: Government has urged 100,000 residents of Maguindanao to return home after they were displaced in clashes between soldiers and a Filipino-Muslim rebel group that killed 150 people, including 139 rebels.
“Members of the Maguindanao Inter-agency Provincial Peace and Order Council (PPOC) have organised a committee after the military started clearing civilian areas of members of the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF), so that 100,000 residents in the second district of Maguindanao where clashes between government soldiers and BIFF fighters occurred, could return home and start working,” Maguindanao governor Esmail Mangudadatu told Gulf News in a phone interview.
Representatives of the Humanitarian Emergency Assistance and Response Team (HEART) in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), is helping the PPOC’s campaign, said Mangudadatu.
Relief goods will be sent to residents when they return home, said the social welfare department, adding that more than 100 tonnes of food supplies were sent to evacuation centres that were established in 11 towns in Maguindanao right after the government declared an all-out war against the BIFF in late January. “Soldiers are deployed for small-scale operations in affected civilian areas to prevent BIFF members from returning from mountain areas and their hideouts in the Liguasan Marsh,” Armed Forces Chief Gen. Gregorio Catapang said in a press conference at the Villamor Airbase in Manila’s suburban Pasay City.
“We will help local government units and other government agencies to deliver public services, and start development projects to spur economic activities in these areas,” Catapang said.
About 139 BIFF members were killed, 53 others wounded, and 12 BIFF leaders werecaptured. Close to 10 soldiers were killed in these incidents, military records and other sources said, adding that the military has neutralised 50 per cent of the BIFF, and seized their bomb factories, camps and hideouts in Maguindanao.
But the military failed to capture Basit Usman, a wanted bomb-maker. He escaped a police anti-terror operation that killed Malaysian bomb expert Zulkifli Bin Abdhir, in Tukalaipao village, Mamasapano town, Maguindanao, in January. Five civilians, 44 police special forces and 18 fighters of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) which had forged a pro-autonomy political settlement with the government in 2014, were also killed in the same incident.
