Gunmen torch Marwan's house in Mamasapano
Breaking News • 17:02 PM Wed Feb 25, 2015
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By:
John Unson
Zulkifli bin Hir alias Marwan
MAMASAPANO, Maguindanao – Unidentified gunmen in a remote village here set on fire Tuesday night
using kerosene the house of slain Malaysian terrorist Zulkifli bin Hir alias
Marwan, police said.
The arson attack was perpetrated just hours after members of the
government’s Board of Inquiry (BOI) toured Barangay Tukanalipao in Mamasapano
to inspect the scenes of the deadly January 25 encounter between policemen and
Moro rebels.
Inspector Reggie Abellara, chief of the Mamasapano municipal police
confirmed Wednesday morning that Marwan’s house was burned by men brandishing
assault rifles and shoulder-fire grenade launchers. We have confirmed that from barangay folks and community leaders,” Abellera
said.
Villagers had told Army officials in Mamasapano that the arsonists used
dried coconut palms and kerosene in setting Marwan’s house on fire.Marwan was killed inside his house, made only of indigenous materials, in
a dawn raid on January 25 by operatives of the police’s elite Special Action
Force.
Abellera said they are still trying to establish the identities of the
arsonists.
The scenes of the January 25 SAF-rebel encounters in Barangays Inog-og,
Pidsandawan and Tukanalipao are common strongholds of the Moro Islamic
Liberation Front and the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters.
The outlawed BIFF is not covered by the government-MILF July 2007
Agreement on General Cessation of Hostilities.
The SAF commandos were maneuvering their way out of Barangay Inog-og
after having killed Marwan there when they were attacked by MILF guerillas and
BIFF gunmen, precipitating firefights that lasted for 10-hours.The skirmishes, which left 44 SAF members, 18 MILF guerillas and five
civilians dead, waned only after the Malaysian-led International Monitoring
Team (IMT) intervened.
The IMT, comprised of soldiers from Malaysia, Brunei, Libya and
Indonesia, and conflict resolution experts from Japan, Norway and the European
Union, has been helping oversee the government-MILF ceasefire accord since
2003.
Abellera said community elders and traditional leaders in Mamasapano are
now helping them investigate on the burning of Marwan’s house, located less
than a hundred meters away from the shanty of his ethnic Maguindanaon
accomplice, Abdul Basit Usman.
Usman had undergone training in handling of explosives and fabrication
of improvised bombs in Peshawar, Pakistan and in Kandahar, Afganistan during
the early 1990s.
Usman, who was wounded in the January 25 dawn raid at Barangay Inog-og, escaped
bringing with him his firearms and materials for home-made bombs. (JOHN UNSON)