NORTH COTABATO, Philippines - The police and military are anticipating and preparing for retaliations by the outlawed Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom fighters following two encounters with militiamen and armed farmers early this week that left five BIFF bandits dead.
Captain Tony Bulao, spokesman of the Army’s 602nd Brigade, said the first encounter was sparked by the bandits’ attack on a detachment of the Citizens Armed Forces Geographical Unit in Barangay Paidu Pulangi in Pikit town Sunday.
The bandits, positioned at a bank of a 10-meter wide river in Barangay Dasawao in Saidona town in Maguindanao, fired rockets and assault rifles at the CAFGU detachment across the waterway separating the two provinces, triggering a brief firefight.
Soldiers and civilian volunteers that cleared the surroundings of the detachment found next day an abandoned pumpboat adrift carrying cadavers of three men with gunshot wounds, apparently BIFF bandits killed in the encounter.
Two more BIFF bandits were reportedly killed Monday in an encounter with militiamen and villagers in Purok Mirasol in Barangay Palumugin in Midsayap town in the first district of North Cotabato.
The BIFF bandits arrived at Purok Mirasol from a swampy area in a marsh in nearby Libungan town on board pumpboats, fired at houses, forcing villagers to run for their lives.
Armed farmers and militiamen engaged the bandits in a running firefight, but eventually retreated after sensing that more gunmen coming from a nearby Maguindanao town were closing in.
Evacuees said the villagers had killed two bandits before the firefight waned.
Supt. Renante Delos Santos, chief of the Midsayap municipal police, said the bandits looted the abandoned houses and several sari-sari stores in Purok Mirasol, before returning to the marsh from where they launched the attack.
“They took goats of farmers that scampered away and the merchandise displayed inside the abandoned stores before leaving,†Delos Santos said.
Delos Santos and Bulao both called on farmers in remote North Cotabato villages that are vulnerable to BIFF attacks to be watchful of their surroundings and to immediately report to the nearest Army and police outposts any sighting of armed men in their farms.