Dysentery downs 10 Scout Rangers fighting Moro rebels

COTABATO CITY, Philippines – Ten Army Scout Rangers involved in operations against Moro rebels have been hospitalized due to dysentery after drinking water from springs that military tacticians said could be contaminated with pesticides and other toxins.

Local officials and military sources said the soldiers were brought to the Camp Siongco Hospital in Datu Odin Sinsuat, Maguindanao yesterday.

Lt. Col. Jonathan Ponce, spokesman of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division, said the Scout Rangers drank water from springs in Maguindanao’s adjoining towns of Talayan, Datu Odin Sinsuat, and Guindulungan where they had been running after Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) guerrillas for a week now.

“Our experts are now trying to determine if these springs have been deliberately contaminated with poison and other deadly substances to the detriment of the innocent people who rely on them for drinking water,” Ponce said.

A soldier and his wife were killed while four others, among them an Army lieutenant, were seriously wounded when MILF rebels blasted a roadside bomb just as they were passing by on their way to a spring near their camp in Datu Unsay town last week.

Ponce said MILF rebels “are now desperate” and thus, are targeting even unarmed soldiers and their dependents.

“But that’s part of the risk soldiers of the Philippine Republic have to face in keeping with their mission of addressing threats to national security,” Ponce said.

Eid Kabalu, MILF spokesman, has denied insinuations that their fighters could have deliberately contaminated mountain springs.

“What can we gain from doing so? We have always been careful of not harming people who are not supposed to be harmed as we defend our positions from the unending cycle of attacks by the military,” Kabalu said.

Ponce said they have been receiving feedback from local officials that MILF rebels have also planted landmines near springs located along trails leading to their camps.

The 6th ID has advised officials in conflict-torn towns to be more vigilant against possible retaliations by the MILF following last Saturday’s takeover by Scout Rangers and other Army units of its two well-fortified enclaves in Barangay Muti, Guindulungan town after 24 hours of air and ground maneuvers.

One of the camps, which had running trenches and overhead mortar shelters, could accommodate at least 500 guerrillas.

Ponce said their intelligence units are validating a report that several lists of wealthy businessmen in Central Mindanao and their business and residential addresses were found in the MILF camps.

“We have been told that there were even schematic diagrams of the road networks around each of the establishments and houses owned by the businessmen whose names were on the lists. They could be potential kidnapping targets,” Ponce said.

Kabalu, however, dismissed this as an “unfounded, thinly veiled smear campaign” against the MILF.