BIFF attacks Midsayap; farmer hurt

NORTH COTABATO, Philippines  --- A villager was wounded as members of the brigand Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters attacked military positions in Midsayap town and set off improvised explosives Monday  following the military’s takeover of the group’s enclave at the border of the neighboring Sultan Kudarat and Maguindanao provinces.

Senior Inspector Henry Narciso, chief of the Midsayap municipal police, identified the wounded villager as farmer Allan Dimatingkal, who sustained shrapnel wounds in different parts of his body when a 40 MM grenade projectile, fired from a distance by a BIFF guerrilla, landed near him.

Narciso said the BIFF bandits, armed with assault rifles and shoulder-fire grenades, first attacked a village in Barangay Tampad in Midsayap, a town of mixed Moro and Christian residents in the first district of North Cotabato.

Narciso said the bandits, after meeting  resistance from soldiers and armed villagers, repositioned and proceeded to nearby Barangay Nabalawag, also in Midsayap, where they attacked another Army detachment,  sparking a 20-minute firefight.

The gunmen withdrew and escaped toward a nearby marsh after realizing they could not breach the circumferential fence of the detachment of the Charlie Company of the 40th IB in Barangay Nabalawag.

The attacks came a day after the Army’s 6th Infantry Division announced the capture by soldiers of a BIFF enclave at the border of President Quirino, Sultan Kudarat and Gen. S.K. Pendatun town in Maguindanao.

The BIFF camp was overran after bandits, led by Ustadz Sukarno, killed  militiaman Vicente Macaraeg and farmer Roy Viola in separate attacks over the weekend in Barangay Bagumbayan in President Quirino.

Sukarno and his men also fired B-40 anti-tank rockets and assault rifles at a detachment of the 33rd IB in Barangay Bagumbayan as they fled toward the Liguasan Marsh, bringing with them a dozen water buffaloes they took from farmers at gunpoint.