Six Datu Salibo residents hurt in mortar explosion

MAGUINDANAO --- Six villagers, three of them minors, were hurt in a mortar blast that ripped through a village in Datu Salibo town Sunday night, the police said. 

Senior members of the multi-sector Salibo peace and order council identified the victims as Harris Abdulkarim, 36, Kusain Hamdan, 20, and the 44-year-old Nano Mama. Also hurt were children aged 8, 6 and 15.

They sustained shrapnel wounds in different parts of their bodies.

The local police, in a report to Brig. Gen. Samuel Rodriguez of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region, said a mortar round hit the house of the victims in Barangay Sambolawan in Datu Salibo, Maguindanao.

Isolated barangays in Salibo and in neighboring Maguindanao towns are locked in a showdown for more than a week now between soldiers and members of the outlawed Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters, also known as the Dawlah Islamiya.

Datu Salibo is one of the towns in the second district of Maguindanao where there is BIFF presence.

The group, fashioned from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, has a reputation for venting its ire on non-military targets either to avenge losses in clashes with state security forces, or as diversionary attacks to disrupt military anti-terror offensives or police law-enforcement operations.

Local officials and Moro traditional leaders said the BIFF has been taunting military units in Maguindanao by harassing soldiers in detachments after its members attacked more than a week ago the town proper of Datu Piang in the province.

Gunmen clad in black attires burned the patrol vehicle of the Datu Piang municipal police and shot houses in the surroundings as they scampered away when they sensed that Army reinforcements were closing in. 

Rodriguez, who is director of PRO-BAR, said he has directed the Maguindanao provincial police to investigate and put closure to Sunday night’s explosion that injured six residents of Barangay Sambolawan.