COTABATO CITY – Four members of the terrorist group Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters were killed in a clash Wednesday – barely three days after they swooped down on a southern Philippine town, stole food and terrorized civilians for hours before fighting security forces and eventually escaping.
Brigadier General Roy Galido, commander of the 601st Infantry Brigade, said troops clashed with a group of terrorists and killed four of them in the outskirts of Datu Paglas town the BIFF raided over the weekend.
Galido said troops recovered the bodies of the slain gunmen. “The operating troops recovered four dead bodies belonging to the extremist group, one high powered firearm, and other war materials,” he said.
Dozens of BIFF gunmen raided Datu Paglas over the weekend, but it was unclear how they managed to enter the town in the restive province of Maguindanao undetected by security forces.
Galido said security forces were pursuing the BIFF when soldiers clashed with the gunmen. The fighting occurred just a day after President Rodrigo Duterte inspected troops at the 6th Infantry Division in Maguindanao’s Datu Odin Sinsuat town, about 99 kilometers from Datu Paglas town.
Most of the BIFF members were former fighters of the larger separatist rebel group Moro Islamic Liberation Front, whose chairman Murad Ebrahim is now the Chief Minister of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao following the signing of the 2014 peace accord with Manila.
The attack in Datu Paglas town crippled the highway linking it to other towns and triggered an exodus of civilians for fear of being caught in the battle between militants and soldiers sent to take control of the place.
There were no reports of civilian or military casualties, but photos of houses riddled with bullet holes immediately went viral in social media. The fighting occurred during the last days of the holy month of Ramadan. (Mindanao Examiner. Rhoderick Beñez contributed to this report from Kidapawan City.)
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