Decade-old spat leads to bloody clan war

COTABATO CITY — A decade-old conflict led to Thursday’s violent clash between two related clans, both identified with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, in Barira, Maguindanao, that left five people dead and six others wounded and forced dozens of villagers to flee their homes.

Senior Superintendent Isnaji Bantala, police director of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, said a company-sized contingent of soldiers and policemen was deployed in strategic spots in Barira yesterday to pacify the feuding Maricor and Omar clans.

The trouble started when heavily armed members of the Omar clan, led by Ismael and Parantung, attacked a community in Barangay Ruminimbang and shot dead siblings Ruben, Johnny and Noraima Maricor and their cousins, Iskak Soliman and Normallah Mamatong, a public school teacher.

Six other relatives of the Maricors, including six-year-old Sabturani Soliman, were seriously wounded.

Barira Mayor Alexander Tomawis said the two families first became hostile to each other when a certain Hadji Ismael Omar was murdered by suspected members of the Maricor clan in a Muslim community in Quiapo, Manila about a decade ago.