MAGUINDANAO, Philippines - Marauding Moro bandits and soldiers on Friday traded sporadic shots in Talayan town, forcing dozens of peasant families to evacuate to safer areas.
The running firefights erupted when members of the outlawed Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF) attacked a team of soldiers dispatched to verify the reported presence of unidentified gunmen in a farming enclave west of Talayan.
Talayan is an agricultural town in the second district of Maguindanao.
The BIFF gunmen even tried to encircle the Army combatants, but balked and repositioned away when more soldiers arrived to help drive them away.
Another group of bandits shot with B-40 anti-tank rockets at a detachment of soldiers near Barangay Tukanalipao in Mamasapano town, also in the second district of the province.
The detachment the BIFF bandits bombarded is near one of the three scenes of the deadly January 25 encounter between police commandos and guerrillas of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).
No one from among the soldiers in the detachment was hurt in the rocket attack, but the explosions caused panic among villagers in peasant enclaves nearby.
At least 44 members of the police’s elite Special Action Force, 17 MILF rebels and five civilians were killed in the January 25 Mamasapano incident, which shook the nation to its core.
The encounter also challenged the government’s two compacts with the MILF - the September 15, 2013 Framework Agreement on Bangsamoro and the March 27, 2014 Comprehensive Agreement on Bangsamoro.