The military on Friday belied news reports that there was intense fighting on Thursday between rival forces of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters in Pikit,
Lt. Col. Audie Edralin, commanding officer of the Army’s 7th
Infantry Battalion, said even community leaders in Barangay Kabasalan, where
the incident supposedly happened, denied that the two groups figured in running
firefights.
“One of my subordinate-officers had even talked to Commander
Jack Abbas of the MILF and he denied there were hostilities between his group
and the BIFF on Thursday,” Edralin said.
Abbas leads one of several MILF groups in Pikit, the gateway
to the 220,000-hectare Liguasan Delta, a haven of criminal gangs, extortionists
and rogue Moro rebels.
Senior Inspector Sindatu Karim, chief of the Pikit municipal
police, said there was an attempt by BIFF bandits from Maguindanao province to
intrude into Barangay Kabasalan, but balked after local residents and MILF
forces fired warning shots while the bandits were still two kilometers away.
The BIFF bandits, led by Ustadz Karialan, retreated to one
side of a river straddling through the border of Maguindanao and North Cotabato and eventually disappeared.
Karialan is a trusted henchman of the BIFF’s founder, the Saudi-trained cleric Ameril Umbra Kato.
The police enlisted the help of barangay officials in
validating the reported presence of another group of bandits at the border of
Pikit and Aleosan town, also in North Cotabato ,
mulcting “protection money” from Moro peasants.
“There was no actual engagement between the MILF and the
BIFF in Pikit” said Captain Jo-Ann Petinglay, spokesperson of the Army’s 6th
Infantry Division.
The 7th Infantry Battalion, which is based in the town
proper of Pikit, is a component unit of 6th ID.
Karim said police investigators have confirmed that some
residents of Barangay Kabasalan had evacuated to nearby barangays after
learning of the BIFF’s attempt to seek refuge in Pikit, apparently scared by
circulating stories that military units in Maguindanao would pounce on them
anytime soon.
"But the general situation in interior barangays in
Pikit is normal,” Karim said.
Even Von Al Haq, spokesman of the Bangsamoro Islamic Armed
Forces, said there were no skirmishes between MILF and BIFF forces in any part
of the municipality.
Tahira Kalantongan, Pikit’s municipal social welfare
officer, said residents of Barangay Kabasalan decided to leave their homes for
fear of an outbreak of hostilities in their villages between the BIFF and the
MILF.
“These are people that experienced bloody armed conflicts in
the past that is why they easily get scared by stories insinuating there might
be an outbreak of hostilities in their barangays,” Kalantongan said.
Kalantongan said the evacuees from Barangay Kabasalan are
now housed in makeshift relief sites inside the campus of a government high
school in Barangay Bulol, also in Pikit.
She said the local government of Pikit will soon facilitate
their return to their villages.
http://www.philstar.com/nation/2015/02/06/1420837/officials-deny-milf-biff-clash-north-cotabato
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