Moro rebels fire at Army detachment

COTABATO CITY , Philippines   – Moro rebels fired assault rifles at a roadside Army detachment in Guindulungan, Maguindanao the other day in what authorities believe could be the initial salvo of attacks meant to highlight the “first anniversary” of the aborted signing of an ancestral domain agreement with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).

According to the MILF website (www. luwaran.net), two soldiers were killed by guerrilla snipers, a claim that the Army’s 6th Infantry Division branded as “whimsical,” as all its detachments along the highway traversing Guindulungan are located on strategic hills not accessible to the rebels.

Local officials in North Cotabato said tension has been high in isolated areas in Pikit, Midsayap and Aleosan towns, where MILF guerrillas have lately been building up forces, as if bracing for massive attacks.

Talk is rife that militant factions in the MILF would mount attacks on Aug. 5, exactly a year after the aborted signing of the memorandum of agreement on ancestral domain (MOA-AD), the supposed basis for the setting up of a southern Moro homeland which the front was to manage based on Islamic principles of governance.

The municipal peace and order councils in the three North Cotabato towns have started imposing security measures aimed at preventing any hostilities in their respective jurisdictions.

It was at the border of Aleosan and Midsayap that Ameril Ombra Kato, chief of the MILF’s 105th Base Command, and his followers plundered farming villages, burned some 300 houses, and carted away more than 200 water buffalos after the botched signing of the MOA-AD, which the Supreme Court later declared unconstitutional.

Eid Kabalu, MILF spokesman, however, has denied insinuations of possible attacks by their forces in the coming days.