Officials deny MILF-BIFF clash in North Cotabato

NORTH Cotabato, Philippines - The military on Friday belied news reports that there was intense fighting on Thursday between rival forces of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters in Pikit, North Cotabato.

Lt. Col. Audie Edralin, commanding officer of the Army’s 7th Infantry Battalion, said even community leaders in Barangay Kabasalan, where the incident supposedly happened, denied that the two groups figured in running firefights.

“One of my subordinate-officers had even talked to Commander Jack Abbas of the MILF and he denied there were hostilities between his group and the BIFF on Thursday,” Edralin said.

Abbas leads one of several MILF groups in Pikit, the gateway to the 220,000-hectare Liguasan Delta, a haven of criminal gangs, extortionists and rogue Moro rebels.

Senior Inspector Sindatu Karim, chief of the Pikit municipal police, said there was an attempt by BIFF bandits from Maguindanao province to intrude into Barangay Kabasalan, but balked after local residents and MILF forces fired warning shots while the bandits were still two kilometers away.

The BIFF bandits, led by Ustadz Karialan, retreated to one side of a river straddling through the border of Maguindanao and North Cotabato and eventually disappeared.

Karialan is a trusted henchman of the BIFF’s founder, the Saudi-trained cleric Ameril Umbra Kato.

The police enlisted the help of barangay officials in validating the reported presence of another group of bandits at the border of Pikit and Aleosan town, also in North Cotabato, mulcting “protection money” from Moro peasants.

“There was no actual engagement between the MILF and the BIFF in Pikit” said Captain Jo-Ann Petinglay, spokesperson of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division.

The 7th Infantry Battalion, which is based in the town proper of Pikit, is a component unit of 6th ID.

Karim said police investigators have confirmed that some residents of Barangay Kabasalan had evacuated to nearby barangays after learning of the BIFF’s attempt to seek refuge in Pikit, apparently scared by circulating stories that military units in Maguindanao would pounce on them anytime soon.

"But the general situation in interior barangays in Pikit is normal,” Karim said.

Even Von Al Haq, spokesman of the Bangsamoro Islamic Armed Forces, said there were no skirmishes between MILF and BIFF forces in any part of the municipality.

Tahira Kalantongan, Pikit’s municipal social welfare officer, said residents of Barangay Kabasalan decided to leave their homes for fear of an outbreak of hostilities in their villages between the BIFF and the MILF.

“These are people that experienced bloody armed conflicts in the past that is why they easily get scared by stories insinuating there might be an outbreak of hostilities in their barangays,” Kalantongan said.

Kalantongan said the evacuees from Barangay Kabasalan are now housed in makeshift relief sites inside the campus of a government high school in Barangay Bulol, also in Pikit.

She said the local government of Pikit will soon facilitate their return to their villages.