Attack forces Tirurays to evacuate

COTABATO CITY — Dozens of Tiruray natives, long opposed to logging near their village in Upi, Maguindanao, fled to safer grounds the other day after their houses were strafed with automatic weapons.

Worse, the attack took place just as soldiers were scouring nearby barangays in search of alleged Abu Sayyaf gunmen led by Khadafy Janjalani in an operation which started last month.

Local leaders have expressed alarm over the military offensive which they said was being conducted despite the confirmed absence of Janjalani in the area.

Bai Fatima Sinsuat, governor of the Philippine National Red Cross, who also hails from Upi, some 40 kilometers southwest of this city, said the evacuees from Sitio Krubung are now seeking temporary refuge in makeshift shelters in their family farm in Barangay Resa.

"We are just waiting for the list of evacuees from the barangay officials. It’s a requisite for any action we will undertake to help alleviate their plight," Sinsuat said.

For two days now, officials of the Army-led anti-crime Task Force Tugis, which has been insisting that seafaring Abu Sayyaf gunmen, led by Janjalani, landed in Barangay Laguitan in Upi last month, could not be reached for comment.

The task force is now the subject of criticisms following the findings of tribal, religious and political leaders in Upi that the trouble in Barangay Laguitan resulted only from a feud between two armed families, which escalated about two weeks ago.

One of the feuding factions is identified with influential loggers there, while the other reportedly has links with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).

Local officials have confirmed that soldiers and members of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), whose local commander is allegedly engaged in logging in Laguitan and nearby forestlands, have since been scouring the densely forested ancestral lands of the Tirurays, in search of supposed Abu Sayyaf gunmen.

Sinsuat, who is a Maguindanaoan, has appealed for sobriety among the sectors affected by the military’s maneuvers in the timber-rich areas of Upi.

Eid Kabalu, spokesman of the MILF, said their coordinating committee on the cessation of hostilities will discuss with its government counterpart the security problems now besetting tribal communities in Upi’s forested areas during their scheduled meeting here.