2 Maranaos dead, 4 hurt in Lanao del Sur clan war

COTABATO CITY — Two Maranaos were killed while four others were badly hurt in exchanges of gunfire between two feuding clans in Malabang, Lanao del Sur on Tuesday morning, September 24.

In separate reports on Wednesday to Brig. Gen. Prexy Tanggawohn, director of the Police Regional office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region, the Malabang Municipal Police Station and the Lanao del Sur Provincial Police Office stated that the slain male Maranaos belonged to one of the two groups locked in a bloody “rido,” which means clan war in most Moro vernaculars, that traded shots using assault rifles at the border of Bacayawan and Tubok areas in the municipality.

The two clans are reportedly locked in a rido for three years now, according to traditional leaders and members of the Islamic religious community in Malabang, a seaside town in the second district of Lanao del Sur. 

Major Ivan John Bakian, Malabang municipal police chief, told reporters on Wednesday that the two slain Maranaos were immediately buried by relatives in keeping with their religious tradition of burying the dead within 24 hours from time of death.

Four innocent villagers, the Maranaos Ansary Dindic, 60, and Hamdanie Ibrahim, 42, and their ethnic Maguindanaon neighbors, Esmail Abdul, 53 and his 22-year-old relative, Jemar Abdul, were hurt in the ensuing crossfire.

Bakian said the victims, who sustained bullet wounds in different parts of their bodies, are now confined in a hospital.

Municipal and provincial police officials and local executives have disengaged the two groups to enable villagers to return to their homes at the boundary of Bacayawan and Tubok that they were forced to abandon as gunshots and explosions of 40 millimeter grenade projectiles fired using launchers reverberated through their dwelling enclaves in the area.