Maguindanao villagers return home after police firefight with narco mayor aides

MAGUINDANAO — The 580 families dislocated by the hostilities between drug traffickers and government troops in Ampatuan town have started returning to their strife-torn villages.

The displaced folks began dismantling their makeshift shelters around the public gymnasium in the town proper of Ampatuan, where they stayed for three days after the January 26 trouble that rocked their enclaves in Barangays Saniag and Masalay southwest of the municipality.

Three followers of wanted Ampatuan Mayor Rasul Sangki were killed while four others were wounded in a series of firefights with combined police and Army teams that tried to arrest him during a dawn raid in Barangay Saniag.

The series of encounters, which immediately spilled over to nearby corn farms in Barangay Masalay, also left 12 soldiers wounded, now confined in the Army’s Camp Siongco Hospital in Datu Odin Sinsuat, Maguindanao.

Sangki, a scion of an influential clan in Ampatuan, is included in Malacañang’s list of narco-politicians.

The evacuees were assisted by the disaster reaction group of the Maguindanao provincial government and the Humanitarian Emergency Assistance and Response Team (HEART) in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) in their return to their homes.

Maguindanao Gov. Esmael Mangudadatu said his office will continue to monitor the situation of the evacuees who have returned to the two barangays.

The office of Mangudadatu and the HEART jointly provided the displaced folks with food and other provisions procured from stores in nearby towns while at evacuation sites.