Sniper fire mars Marawi evacuation
MARAWI CITY—Air strikes resumed on Sunday afternoon after a four-hour humanitarian ceasefire meant to evacuate noncombatants was marred by sniper fire from Maute group terrorists.
Government jets and helicopters fired on Maute positions near the city center around 2 p.m., after the expiry of the ceasefire, military officials said.
The evacuation was led by five teams of Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) members who went to the war zone to persuade about 2,000 civilians to come out after 13 days in hiding.
“We were able to retrieve 134 children, men, women, elderly and the sick,” Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process Assistant Secretary Dickson Hermoso told reporters.
But one team was not able to evacuate anyone after they were met with sniper fire at Barangay Banggolo, an hour and a half into the truce.
Agakhan Shareif, a Marawi civic leader involved in the rescue plan, said they were nearing Barangay Banggolo when they were fired upon by a gunman from Maute positions.
An elderly woman was killed by the intermittent sniper fire, scaring off most of the trapped civilians to emerge from hiding.
Irene Santiago, chair of the Bangsamoro peace process, said the rescue operation was pulled off after the MILF ceasefire committee offered to help make a peace corridor for civilians.
The peace corridor was a result of the meeting last week between President Duterte and the MILF.
“We opened that peace corridor and you can see that we were able to accomplish so much in so little time,” she said, adding that MILF emissaries persuaded Maute group leader Abdullah Maute to agree to a four-hour ceasefire from 8 a.m. to noon of Sunday.
Santiago said the peace corridor covered the area from Banggolo Bridge up to Quezon Avenue of Marawi, which is about 3 kilometers.
But Santiago clarified the government did not offer anything in exchange for the truce.
“We did not offer anything to them. When you are negotiating, you try not to offer anything,” she said.
Santiago hoped that the military and Maute group could implement another truce for the 1,000 to 2,000 civilians who remain trapped in the war zone.
MILF ‘heroes’
“We will take it one day at a time,” she said as Hermoso thanked the MILF volunteers for their courage.
We should not forget them. They are the heroes who sacrificed and took the risk of going inside,” Hermoso said.
One of the MILF volunteers, Arjani Mimbantas, said he was driven by the thought of helping the civilians who had been hiding without food or water for 12 days already.
As of June 2, the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao’s Humanitarian Emergency Action and Response Team reported a total of 221,275 displaced people.
Of the total number, 58,160 people are in evacuation centers while 163,115 are staying with relatives outside Marawi.
Earlier, President Duterte said the siege would be over within days although the city has been under siege for almost two weeks.
“This will be over in about three more days,” Mr. Duterte said on Saturday after visiting a Cagayan de Oro hospital where wounded soldiers were being treated.
“I can end this war in 24 hours,” the President said. “All I have to do is bomb the whole place and level it to the ground.”
But he feared an increase in civilian casualties, which, authorities said, has already reached 38 deaths on Sunday. Duterte said the use of air power has been restrained so far.
About 400 local militants reinforced by about 40 foreign fighters stormed Marawi on May 23, using sophisticated battlefield tactics to take control of large swaths of the lakeside city.
But they have been pushed to the city center by some 4,000 ground troops bolstered by helicopters and aircraft firing rockets and bombs.
A presidential spokesperson said 120 militants had died, along with 38 government forces. —WITH A REPORT FROM
EDWIN O. FERNANDEZ AND RYAN D. ROSAURO, INQUIRER MINDANAO
