BIFF attacks Army units; soldier killed

SULTAN KUDARAT, Philippines — A soldier was killed while three others were wounded as members of the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters simultaneously attacked two Army detachments at the border of Sultan Kudarat and Maguindanao provinces before dawn Saturday.

Capt. Jo-Ann Petinglay, spokesperson of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division, said members of the outlawed BIFF surrounded the detachments of the Army’s 33rd Infantry Battalion in Barangay Kulasi in Gen. S.K. Pendatun town in Maguindanao and in Barangay Katiku in Sultan Kudarat’s President Quirino municipality and opened fire with assault rifles.

The attackers also pounded the detachments with shoulder-fire 40 millimeter grenade projectiles.

Although outnumbered, the soldiers returned fire, preventing the bandits from breaching through the perimeter fences of their positions.

The gunmen retreated to a nearby marsh after soldiers fired M-60 and K3 machine guns to drive them away.

Petinglay said a soldier was killed while three others were wounded in the ensuing firefight.

The BIFF, led by radical clerics who studied Islamic theology in the Middle East, does not recognize the July 1997 Agreement on General Cessation of Hostilities between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

The group, which is fighting for a "puritan" Islamic state, is feared for its ruthless enforcement of a Taliban-style justice system in areas where it operates.

Petinglay declined to identify the slain and wounded soldiers pending the notification of their families.

Key members of the multi-sectoral municipal peace and order councils in Gen. S.K. Pendatun and in President Quirino said they have been receiving persistent feedback from barangay folks that four BIFF bandits were killed while six others were wounded in the hostilities.