One person was killed and another critically wounded when armed men belonging to rival families clashed in Sibago Island, off Basilan province on Saturday, officials confirmed. But the number of casualties could actually be higher than what was reported, provincial officials said, as details coming from Sibago Island remains sketchy as of late Saturday. “So far, the reports we have been getting remain sketchy but what was clear, based on the report of the village chief there, was that a group headed by a Gais Mansur attacked members of the Kullong family,” Muhammad Ajul, Basilan Mayor Talib Pawaki told the Inquirer by phone.
Pawaki, who has jurisdiction over the
island-village, said the initial figure could go higher as details become
clearer. “We were told there’s a number of killed
and hurt,” he said. Pawaki said another report he got from
policemen and soldiers, who had responded to the 9 a.m. hostility, was that
Mansur’s group had suffered one death in the gun battle.
Tahira Ismael, Basilan provincial
administrator, said it has become a puzzle for local officials that the feud
between the two families, which had been settled two years ago, had been
rekindled. She said with the incident, the provincial
government has requested the military and the police to deploy more forces to
the area to prevent the violence from going out of hand.
Pawaki said he was still trying to
negotiate for a sea vessel at the Lamitan wharf, which could bring him and other
officials to Sibago Island, so they could determine what started the fresh
clash. He said that from the initial report they
got, Mansur’s group had initially shot a Pujong Arasad, who is a relative of the
Kullong’s, before proceeding to the community where the family lives. “Arasad remains in critical condition at
the Basilan Provincial Hospital in Isabela City,” Pawaki said.
Feuds between prominent families are
common in areas of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), where many
civilians possess firearms. In most cases, unless settled, these feuds
erupt into major violence that would sometimes drag in members of the Moro
Islamic Liberation Front. A case in point was the feud between the
Mangudadatu and the Ampatuan families of Maguindanao. The said feud, which was political in
nature, erupted into what is now known as the country’s bloodiest
politically-related violence. At least 58 people – 32 of them
journalists – were killed in November 2009 when alleged members of the Ampatuan
family, led by then Datu Unsay mayor Andal Ampatuan Jr., flagged down a convoy
of supporters and relatives of then Buluan town vice mayor Esmael Mangudadatu.
The convoy, which included vehicles
bearing the journalists, was on its way to Shariff Aguak for the filing of
Mangudadatu’s certificate of candidacy for the Maguindanao gubernatorial race
against Andal Jr. Andal Jr. and most members of the Ampatuan
family had been arrested over the incident while Mangudadatu became governor of
Maguindanao after the elections held a few months later.
Acting ARMM Governor Mujiv Hataman
admitted that feuds were among factors that have stunted the growth of the
five-province region. ARMM Assemblywoman Samira Gutoc-Tomawis of
Lanao del Sur said that family and clan feuds are characterized by sporadic
outbursts of retaliatory violence between families and kinship groups, as well
as between communities. Hataman said some feuds indeed start from
a simple spat such as in the case of an incident in Sumisip, Basilan a few years
back. He said the violence involving two
families there started when a man, whose clothes got splattered with dirt by a
passing tricycle, shot to death the driver. Hataman said efforts were continuing to
patch up feuding families and there had been successes.
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