ILIGAN CITY – A Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) rebel was killed and several others were wounded in Lanao del Sur on Wednesday as troops fought MILF rebels that pillaged a dozen barangays in Cotabato and Lanao del Norte provinces last month.
Based on intelligence reports, the military believed that Abdullah Macapaar alias Commander Bravo and his men were holding out in the boundary of the two Lanao provinces.
Brig. Gen. Hilario Atendido, Army 1st Infantry Division deputy commander, said soldiers from the 35th Infantry Battalion led by Lt. Col. Jose Faustino encountered some 30 MILF rebels under an unknown commander while on patrol in Barangay Tapurog, Piagapo in Lanao del Sur.
The 30-minute firefight ended after the MILF rebels fled towards the hinterlands of Munai-Pantao Ragat complex, Lanao del Norte, he added.
Atendido said troops recovered from the scene an M16 rifle with one long magazine and 10 short magazines and five combat packs.
“Commander Bravo’s group is now splintered into small groups that are being led by sub-commanders and unknown leaders,” he said.
“This is an indication that the lawless MILF has weakened.”
No casualties were reported on the government side, according to Lt. Col. Ernesto Torres, Armed Forces public affairs chief.
Bomb found near City Hall
A bomb was found outside the Zamboanga City Hall at dawn yesterday, about four hours before the City Council was to hold its regular session.
Zamboanga City Vice Mayor Mannix Dalipe, City Council presiding officer, said if the Council was the target he could not think of any motive except that he had been vocal on the botched signing of the agreement on ancestral domain with the MILF.
The City Council had also declared persona non grata the members of the government peace panel headed by retired Gen. Rodolfo Garcia and presidential peace adviser retired Gen. Hermogenes Esperon Jr., he added.
Dalipe said a teenage boy found the bomb after opening a backpack left in a vacant lot in front of the three-story City Hall at around 5 a.m.
The teenager immediately alerted a passing police mobile patrol car, he added.
Dalipe said the policemen then called up the Explosive Ordnance and Disposal unit.
The bomb squad under Superintendent Jose Bayani Gucela diffused the explosive, he added.
Gucela said the bomb contained three kilos of ammonium nitrate as main charge, mechanical clock, wirings, nine-volt battery but had no triggering charge.
“We don’t know if the city council building is the target of possible bombing because it is the only vital structure which is the nearest to where the bomb was recovered,” he said.
Zamboanga City police director Senior Superintendent Lurimer Detran said they have not downgraded the high alert status because of the threat.
“Whether it’s 9/11 or regular day the security alert in the city will continue due to the present threat against the city,” he said.
‘MILF pact needed Cha-cha’
The agreement on ancestral domain with the MILF was a “political settlement” that could have solved the problem in Mindanao, according to a lawyer who played a major role in crafting the agreement.
Lawyer Camilo Miguel Montesa, former head of the government peace panel’s technical working group, said government negotiators were open to the idea of constitutional change to accommodate this “political solution.”
“Conceptually, if the Philippine Constitution doesn’t fit the solution, it has to be amended,” he said.
“Since the problem solving requires changing the rules, peace talks will always be extra-constitutional. We cannot accept as given the present social structures. They can be changed.”
Speaking at the Ateneo Graduate School at Rockwell in Makati over the weekend, Montesa said President Arroyo had no intention of granting independence to the MILF through the Bangsamoro Juridical Entity.
“It (MOA-AD) was not tenurial but a political settlement,” he said.
Montesa said government negotiators were “looking at a vast range of autonomy arrangements” for as long as they did not talk about independence.
The inclusion of the words “ancestral domain” in the title of the agreement was “somewhat erroneous,” he added.
U.S. NGO hands out medicine
A US-based non-government organization delivered some P22-million worth of medicine for thousands of civilians displaced by the fighting in Mindanao.
Asia America Initiative president Albert Santoli and AAI’s Philippine director Rohaniza Sumndad who led the distribution of the medicine, emphasized solidarity and peace-building among Christian and Muslim communities.
“We learned that this is not a battle between neighbors of different religions who in some cases are living together in temporary outdoor shelters and share what little necessities of life are available,” Sumndad said.
“They strongly expressed that living in inter-cultural communities, they do not want a religious war.”
Santoli said the refugees, a large number of them infants and small children, have little more than the clothes on their backs.
The evacuees do not even have tools for survival, like forks and spoons, and are afraid to return to their homes because of the threat of armed conflict and terror attack, he added. – Lino dela Cruz, James Mananghaya, Roel Pareño, Reinir Padua