File photograph of Army troops engaged in an operation against the BIFF, by Dennis Arcon, InterAlsyon.com.
Reports reaching Manila indicated that a commander of the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF), a splinter group of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), who had been declared dead by the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) in January 2014, was arrested with his son Tuesday night in Cotabato City.
AFP spokesman Brig. Gen. Resituto Padilla, acknowledged the military's blunder in reporting at the time about the death of Hassan Indal alias Abu Azam, who was BIFF's 4th division commander and concurrent vice-chairman of the BIFF.
"Mukhang hindi po 'yun na-verify at kaya naging subject po ito ngayon ng isang operasyon ... We'll have to look at that report again, I'm not aware if that was reported back as having been unverified," Padilla said.
But this time, Padilla said they're certain, because the arrested suspect was positively identified by the locals.
"Mukhang ito po yata ang taong tinutukoy na nasa arrest warrant kasi nandun po 'yung anak niya pati (It looks like this was the person indicated in the arrest warrant, as even the son was there, too)," he said.
At around 11:45 p.m. troops from the 5th Special Forces Battalion led by Lt Col. Rannie Sevilla raided Indal's suspected hiding place in Barangay Motehr Kalangalan.
In a report, BIFF spokesman Abu Misry Mama confirmed the arrest of Indal and his son, who, the military did not identify.
Confiscated from the Indals were a Baby Armalite (Mi16), a caliber .45 pistol, a hand grenade, and assorted ammunition.
On Friday last week, the Army's 6th Infantry Division reported that some 20 BIFF fighters were killed in a firefight that lasted almost eight hours, from 4:40 p.m. to well after midnight.
Captain Jo-Ann Petinglay, 6th Infantry Division (6ID) public affairs officer, said, however, that there was no accurate body count of the slain BIFF fighters, as the information received was based only on reports from civilians who allegedly saw the rebels carrying away their dead and wounded as they retreated from the encounter site.
The series of firefights after that also wounded an Army captain and a Private first class.
Padilla said higher headquarters have ordered 6th ID commander Maj Gen. Edmundo Pangilinan to deploy more troops to places where there is reported build-up of BIFF troops.
After a hiatus of one year due to the absence of major military offensives, the BIFF seems to have regrouped and regained strength to mount new waves of attack.
From February to March 2015, just a few days after the massacre of 44 commandos of the Philippine National Police (PNP) Special Action Force (SAF) in Mamasapano, Maguindanao, President Benigno Aquino declared all-out war and ordered the 6th ID to decimate the BIFF, resulting in the death of 96 rebels and six soldiers and scores of wounded.
The military then claimed the offensives had tremendously weakened the BIFF's command and control structure as they were flushed out of their major camps and pushed deep into the marshlands away from civilian communities.
The all-out war was prompted by in-fighting between the BIFF and MILF that displaced 25,000 residents in Pikit, North Cotabato, aside from verified and confirmed intelligence reports that the BIFF was coddling terrorist leader Basit Usman and Malaysian terrorist Amin Baco.
Both terrorists had slipped away from the SAF operation dubbed "Oplan Exodus" that neutralized on January 26, 2015 the Malaysian terrorist Zulkifli Abdhir, alias Marwan, but also led to the loss of lives on the part of 44 SAF commandos at the hands of hundreds of combined fighters of the MILF, BIFF and private armed groups in Barangay Tukanalipao.
The MILF later claimed it had killed Usman after he resisted arrest, while the latest reports indicated Baco had rejoined the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) in southern Mindanao.
http://www.interaksyon.com/article/123914/biff-commander-declared-dead-in-2014-arrested-in-cotabato-city
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