‘I thought we were going to die’
MARAWI CITY—Joey Laygon, 35, said he could not believe they were able to get out alive from the war zone where they were trapped for 45 days.
“I thought we were going to die,” Laygon said when presented to media on Friday, two days after they were rescued.
Laygon, a father of three from Suarez, Iligan City, was on his second day as a construction worker here when fighting erupted on May 23. He was with his elder brother Joselito.
“On the night of May 23, the Maute men arrived. The next day, our employers told us to just hide in the house and not to come out because something bad may happen because we were Christians,” he said.
He said their hideout was at Barangay Bangolo in the very center of the city where soldiers and Maute men traded gunfire and where bombs were dropped.
Ronnie Villanueva, another survivor, said all four of them “would squeeze ourselves in a small bathroom whenever mortars and bombs exploded outside the house.”
“When we ran out of food after a month of hiding, we went looking in other houses,” he said and they found a power bank in one of the houses.
“Thank God, we were able to find the power bank while we were scouring for food. We immediately charged our mobile phones and contacted the military,” Laygon said.
Billy Artajo, one of those rescued, said he contacted a friend in the Army.
Villanueva said he was certain that if they were not able to get in touch with the military, they would be dead by now.
“We thank the Army for saving us,” he said.
Laygon said on the first week of the fighting, they saw several militants on the streets. But a month later, only few of them were visible. He and his group managed to escape on July 5 after the military told them to head for the nearest Army position in Bangon village.
Lt. Col. Christopher Tampus, commander of the 1st Infantry Battalion, said they arranged a plan to extract the four workers after they contacted the military.
“We asked for air and artillery support to bomb the positions of the enemy so they cannot fire their weapons while (Laygon’s group) were escaping,” he said.
