2 soldiers, 4 Dawlah Islamiya members hurt in Maguindanao del Sur clash

COTABATO CITY — Two soldiers and four members of a local terrorist group operating in the fashion of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria were hurt in a clash in Datu Hoffer, Maguindanao del Sur on Tuesday.

Major Gen. Alex Rillera, commander of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division, on Wednesday said that the gunfight in Barangay Tuayan in Datu Hoffer involved personnel of the 40th Infantry Battalion and members of the ISIS-inspired Dawlah Islamiya.

The gunfight erupted when Dawlah Islamiya members attacked a team of soldiers dispatched to check on reports by villagers through text messages about the presence of gunmen collecting money and rice from hapless farmers at gunpoint.

In a report to 6th ID’s Headquarters in nearby Camp Siongco, the 40th IB and the 601st Infantry Brigade identified the wounded soldiers as Pfc. Anthony Felomino, 26, and the 31-year-old Pfc. Aineer Magayan. They are now confined at the Maguindanao del Sur Provincial Hospital in Shariff Aguak town.

Felomino sustained a bullet wound in the left leg while Magayan was wounded in the right shoulder, according to attending physicians.

Officials of the 40th IB told reporters via Facebook Messenger that Four Dawlah Islamiya members, three of them identified by villagers and local Muslim preachers as Salim, Tasil and Muntasir, were hurt in the ensuing exchange of gunfire.

The sources also reported that the four wounded terrorists are relatives of the slain cousins Abdulkarim Lumbatan Hashim and Danny Usop Cabakunan, both Dawlah Islamiya leaders who were tagged in the fatal ambush of a police officer and a subordinate in Ampatuan, Maguindanao del Sur last year and in the bombing of a number of buses plying the routes connecting the cities of Cotabato, Koronadal and General Santos after owners had refused to pay them “protection money” on a monthly basis.

Hashim and Cabakunan were killed in a shootout with intelligence agents of the Army’s 1st Mechanized Brigade and the Police Regional Office-12 at the public terminal in Tacurong City in Sultan Kudarat province last January.

Barangay officials said that the four wounded Dawlah Islamiya, two of them wounded in the lower torso, were carried away by companions as they scampered away when they sensed that Army reinforcements were closing in.