Thousands of Tausugs displaced by Sulu gunfights
Mindanao Armed Conflict • 06:15 AM Mon Jun 26, 2023
920
By:
John M. Unson
The hostilities in Maimbung, Sulu displaced hundreds of Tausug families. (From Mohammad Adjarani Jaafar)
COTABATO CITY - Some 3,000 Tausug villagers got displaced by the gunfights on Saturday in Maimbung, Sulu between followers of a former vice mayor and government troops that left a policeman dead and hurt 14 others.
Brig. Gen. Allan Nobleza, director of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region, said Sunday their units in Sulu have tapped the support of local leaders in diffusing tension in Barangay Bualo Lipid, scene of Saturday’s clashes between government troops and the group of the recalcitrant former Maimbung Vice Mayor Pando Mudjasan.
Soldiers and members of the Sulu Provincial Police Office were to serve Mudjasan warrants of arrest from courts where there are pending criminal cases against him but he and his followers armed with assault rifles resisted, provoking a series of gunfights that sent innocent villagers running for their lives.
Local executives and officials of the Maimbung Municipal Police Station and the Sulu PPO reported late Sunday that a member of the Special Action Force perished in the ensuing encounters that left nine other SAF personnel, a soldier belonging to the 41st Infantry Battalion and four members of a provincial police mobile company wounded.
Five critically wounded policemen were airlifted for treatment in a hospital in Zamboanga City on Saturday afternoon, according to officials of PRO-BAR.
Text messages have since been spreading around hinting that 11 followers of Mudjasan were wounded in the spate of gunfights that erupted on Saturday morning when he and his men opened fire at soldiers and policemen approaching their location in Barangay Bualo Lipid to arrest him.
Local executives in Sulu told reporters Mudjasan and his men are identified with the Moro National Liberation Front.
The September 2, 1996 peace pact between the MNLF and the government obliges the group to support the police’s law-enforcement operations in areas where it has enclaves.
Army Lt. Gen. Roy Galido, commander of Western Mindanao Command, said Sunday their units are helping the police run after Mudjasan and his heavily-armed followers.
Evacuees had asked the police to validate circulating text messages stating that followers of Mudjasan had set on fire a number of houses around the areas where they traded shots with soldiers and policemen before they fled carrying their wounded companions.