Families displaced by armed hostilities in North Cotabato return home, official says

From the Philippine News Agency (Jan 28): Families displaced by armed hostilities in North Cotabato return home, official says

Civilians displaced by armed hostilities between government forces and suspected jail fugitives and armed lawless elements in a village in Matalam, North Cotabato have returned home, officials said Saturday.

More than 100 families from the sub-village of Imelda in Barangay Taguranao, Matalam, North Cotabato fled their homes Friday after joint police and elements of the 7th Infantry Battalion clashed with about 50 armed men.

The clash resulted in the injury of two soldiers but police believed the lawless elements group also suffered casualties.

They were believed to be armed men protecting some of the escapees who fled the North Cotabato District Jail on Jan. 5 after gunmen, led by Esmael Nasser alias Commander Derbi, attacked the jail compound and rescued a drug lord.

Robert Harder, village chair of Taguranao said the villagers who fled homes stayed overnight in the villages of Alimodian and Minaning, also in Matalam.

Aside from residents of Taguranao, residents of adjacent village of Tamped also fled after the conflict broke out.

"They all returned home safely with their valuables," Harder told DXND Radyo Bida.

They returned to their communities after the military pulled out its forces when the armed lawless elements fled to the Maguindanao marshland.

But pursuing government forces found in an abandoned safe house in Sitio Imelda, Barangay Taguranao, Matalam several back packs, two rifle grenades, a hand grenade, anti-tank land mines and components in making improvised explosive devices.

North Cotabato Gov. Shirlyn Macasarte-Villanueva said police and military forces would continue to hunt down the escapees until all of them were accounted for.

Of the 158 inmates who fled, 53 have been re-arrested and 10 were killed. More than 90 others remained at large.

Meanwhile, Gov. Villanueva announced that the provincial government have extended cash assistance to the victims of the Christmas Eve grenade attack in Midsayap, North Cotabato.
 
"No amount of money can take that horrible experience away from their minds and hearts but at least they know that we care about them. I am happy to have shared my own experience (I'm also a victim of violence in 2008) and how we can turn those negative circumstances into something positive," Villanueva, who survived an ambush in 2008 in North Cotabato, said.

http://www.pna.gov.ph/index.php?idn=2&sid=&nid=2&rid=959019