ARMM sends health workers to Patikul evacuees

COTABATO CITY, Philippines --- The executive department of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao has sent relief and health workers to Patikul town in Sulu to help hundreds of innocent villagers displaced by a series of encounters between the Moro National Liberation Front and the Al-Qaeda linked Abu Sayyaf.

Reports reaching the office here of ARMM Gov. Mujiv Hataman placed to more than 300 families the number of evacuees displaced by the hostilities, which erupted when MNLF members, led by Muslim cleric Habier Malik, attempted to rescue from an Abu Sayyaf enclave kidnapped Jordanian TV reporter Baker Atyani.

Atyani’s two Filipino cameramen, Ramel Vela and audio technician Rolando Letriro, were released by the bandits, led by Radulan Sahiro, on Saturday night in the jungles of Patikul.

There were conflicting reports about the casualties suffered by the two feuding groups.

A report by a Catholic radio station in Sulu, dxMM, said eight followers of Malik and 14 Abu Sayyaf bandits were killed in the ensuing firefights, which waned only Monday night, after forces of both sides regrouped in other areas.

Hataman has instructed his social welfare secretary, Hadja Bainon Karon, ARMM Local Government Secretary Makmod Mending Jr., and the region’s police director, Senior Supt. Noel Delos Reyes, to provide relief services to the villagers dislocated by the skirmishes between the groups of Malik and the Abu Sayyaf, which is led by Radulan Sahiron.

The MNLF signed a peace pact with the government on September 2, 1996, binding both sides to cooperate in addressing peace and security concerns in areas covered by the now 16-year truce.

The ARMM’s health secretary, physician Kadil Sinoliding Jr., said relief workers have been dispatched to at least four barangays in Patikul to attend to the needs of evacuees.

Most of the evacuees are staying in public school campuses in Barangay Danag in Patikul.