Dawlah Islamiya’s top leader killed in Maguindanao

CAMP SIONGCO, Maguindanao — Soldiers killed the top leader in mainland Mindanao of the feared Dawlah Islamiya and his wife in a brief encounter in nearby Talayan town before dawn Friday.

Salahuddin Hassan, wanted for more than 30 deadly bomb attacks in central Mindanao, including the Sept. 2, 2016 bombing of a night market in Davao City that left 14 dead and hurt more than 60 others, died on the spot from multiple gunshot wounds.  

Major Gen. Juvymax Uy, commander of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division, said Friday Hassan’s wife, Jehana Minbida, also got killed in the incident.

“He was supposed to be arrested but the operation was bungled by his resistance. There was a brief encounter,” Uy, also commander of the anti-terror Task Force Central, said.

The slain Jehana was the finance officer of the Dawlah Islamiya, according to local leaders and sources from the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region.

Personnel of units belonging to the 2nd Mechanized Infantry Brigade under Col. Pedro Balisi were to surround Hassan’s house in Barangay Damablak in Talayan, Maguindanao but were forced to immediately neutralize him instead when he pulled out a rifle and opened fire.

Uy said the operation that resulted in Hassan’s death was assisted by PRO-BAR’s director, Police Brig. Gen. Eden Ugale, via the Maguindanao provincial police.

“Credit for the neutralization of Hassan also has to go to vigilant residents of Talayan,” Uy said.

Hassan was tagged in last year’s bombing of a unit of the Yellow Bus Company in Tulunan, North Cotabato and in the subsequent burning of another early this year in Mlang town in the same province.

Relatives have confirmed that Hassan was among the pioneer recruits of the outlawed Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters operating in central Mindanao’s adjoining Sultan Kudarat, North Cotabato and Maguindanao provinces.

Hassan bolted from the BIFF when the group fragmented into three factions four years after the demise in 2011 of its founder, the radical cleric Ameril Ombra Kato, who studied Islamic religion in Saudi Arabia as a government scholar during the time of President Ferdinand Marcos.

Hassan organized in late 2016 the Dawlah Islamiya, which is using the flag of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria as its banner.

He was also the figurehead of two other Dawlah Islamiya subgroups, the Ansa’r Khilafa Philippines operating clandestinely in Sarangani province and the Al-Khobar, blamed for attacks on public transportations whose owners refuse to shell out “protection money” on regular basis.

The Dawlah Islamiya was also implicated in the bombing in late 2018 of a shopping mall in Cotabato City