Hundreds dislocated as BIFF and Army units clash in Maguindanao

MAGUINDANAO – A 14-year-old girl was killed while hundreds of villagers got dislocated in a series of encounters between soldiers and the outlawed Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters on Wednesday.
The hostilities in Barangay Meta in Datu Unsay, Maguindanao erupted when BIFF bandits attacked a team from the Army’s 34th Infantry Battalion dispatched to check the reported presence in the area of a notorious member of the group, Daud Cansi, who is wanted for multiple murder and extortion.
Five adolescent BIFF bandits were killed while two soldiers were wounded in the ensuing firefights, which forced villagers to scamper away bringing with them their belongings and farm animals, including water buffaloes.
Barangay folks said their slain neighbor, Fatima Ilian, was accidentally killed by a BIFF sniper armed with a prototype home-made .50 caliber Barret sniping rifle while exchanging shots with Army combatants.The running firefights waned only after soldiers fired mortars at BIFF positions, forcing them to retreat to nearby hinterlands overlooking strategic stretches of the Cotabato-Gen.Santos Highway, which straddles through the town center of Datu Unsay.Pursuing soldiers recovered materials for fabrication of improvised roadside bombs and drug sniffing paraphernalia along the escape routes of the BIFF bandits.The BIFF-Army encounter in Datu Unsay, which forced the police to close sections of the highway to traffic for two hours, was preceded by an attack earlier Wednesday on soldiers in Barangay Kuloy in nearby Shariff Aguak, Maguindanao.Text messages have been circulating since noontime Wednesday purporting that the BIFF’s harassment of the Army detachment was a diversionary ploy, pulled off after talks about an Army law enforcement operation against Cansi and his followers spread around on Tuesday night.Captain Joann Petinglay, spokesperson of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division, said security has been tightened along vital stretches of the national highway traversing Datu Unsay and nearby towns to prevent BIFF gunmen from possibly harassing passersby.

The BIFF is known for its total disregard of the safety of non-combatants when staging diversionary attacks meant to divert the attention of Army units chasing its wanted commanders.Petinglay said their calibrated actions against the brigand BIFF are coordinated with the joint ceasefire committee of the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, in keeping with security protocols prescribed by Malacañang’s now 19-year interim ceasefire accord with the MILF.The radical BIFF, which splintered from the MILF in 2010, is not covered by the ceasefire agreement, but coordination between the government and the MILF is necessary in law enforcement activities in areas where duly-recognized guerilla enclaves, now dubbed as peace zones,” are located.The People’s Medical Team of the office of Maguindanao Gov. Esmael Mangudadatu initially dispersed on Wednesday afternoon a truckload of relief supplies to evacuees from the conflict-stricken Barangays Kuloy and Meta.Lynette Estandarte, chief provincial budget officer and supervisor of the medical team, said they will disperse more relief supplies in interior conflict-stricken villages once they get security clearance from the military.Estandarte said the provincial government is now validating the exact number of displaced families from barangay officials, a requisite in facilitating releases of more relief goods.