COTABATO CITY—Sabaniya Dimodtang, 35, ran out of her house along with her husband and two children on Friday afternoon after a loud explosion went off in Datu Piang town, where a military ground and air assault was under way.

As she dashed out at Barangay Montay, the seven-month pregnant woman asked her husband Jabin if he had carried with him the coin bank that contained their savings.

He said he had not, that it was on an overhead board above the window of their house.

Sabaniya with daughter Norayda, 15, in tow ran back to get the coin bank.

“The next lethal fireball fell right next to that window and she was fatally wounded,” said Jabin, 38. He told the Philippine Daily Inquirer by phone from an evacuation center in Datu Piang that Norayda also was wounded in the blast, which he said was from military shelling.

Sabaniya and Norayda were brought to the local health center but the mother, heavy with what could have been her third child, later died. “Her left arm was amputated by severe wounds,” Mashud Salik, a volunteer for the local ceasefire monitor team.

Sabaniya was one of five civilians killed in Datu Piang in the military offensive to get Ameril Ombra Kato, a field commander of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) blamed for pillaging several towns in North Cotabato province.

Kato had gone on a rampage, the MILF said, disgruntled at the failure of the government to sign in Malaysia on Aug. 5 an accord on an expanded Bangsamoro homeland. The Supreme Court had stopped the deal, aimed at ending four decades of civil strife that had left 120,000 people dead, following protests from local Mindanao officials.

The military said that troops had mounted over the weekend the fiercest artillery barrage combined with air strikes in Datu Piang, Shariff Aguak and Mamasapano towns, killing 25 MILF fighters and bringing the overall MILF fatalities in the area to 125.

The five civilian dead in Datu Piang reported over the weekend by Dr. Elizabeth Samama, Maguindanao provincial physician, were the first to emerge in the province.

Erratic MILF mortars

Maj. Armand Rico, spokesperson of the Eastern Mindanao Command based in Davao City, denied that the military was responsible for the civilian deaths.

He said it was most likely the civilians were hit by wayward MILF mortar shells. “Their firing device is not accurate,” he said.

Tuesday, the National Disaster Coordinating Center (NDCC) in Camp Aguinaldo reported that the upsurge of fighting in Mindanao had claimed 53 lives. The latest count included a 6-year-old girl and an 11-year-old boy who died in a mortar shelling at Barangay Butilen in Datu Piang.

A 7-year-old girl, Rabyah, was wounded during a shelling on Saturday midnight at Butilen, a marshy inland fishing village in Datu Piang.

Rabiya said all that she could recall was that many of the villagers, including her family, were hiding underneath an old concrete bridge not far from their shanties when the explosion occurred.

“They said the soldiers would not destroy the bridge, because it belonged to the government,” Rabiyah said in the vernacular on her hospital bed in Cotabato City. Several others were wounded in the attack on the bridge.

Kato reported wounded

The military has reported that a total of 17 soldiers and two militiamen had been killed in the fighting. The MILF has confirmed only seven fatalities.

The NDCC said fighting had affected 300,000 people, half of the number confined in evacuation centers.

The guns fell silent over the past two days in Maguindanao, according to Col. Marlou Salazar, commander of the 601st Infantry Brigade. He said there was no activity on the rebel side, probably because Kato had been wounded.

“He is wounded. They are silent and hiding but our soldiers are looking for them,” Salazar said. He also said the rebels had run out of “resources.”

Lt. Col. Julieto Ando, spokesperson of the military’s 6th Infantry Division, said the attempted kidnapping of Dr. Milagros Yap in Cotabato City last week was an indication that a ranking MILF leader had been wounded.

“Usually in fighting, if a ranking rebel leader or commander will get hurt, they are going to kidnap physicians,” Ando said.

MILF spokesperson Eid Kabalu denied that Kato had been wounded. “The kidnapping angle is another black propaganda,” he said.

Kabalu said that the lull in fighting was an obvious result of a government decision to halt its offensive. “The Army has stopped moving so our troops also stopped firing,” Kabalu said.

Lanao del Norte front

On the other major battlefront in Lanao del Norte province, at least 16 MILF fighters were killed and 10 others were wounded Tuesday when the military bombarded and assaulted a rebel encampment in Poona-Piagapo, according to Army spokesperson Maj. Benedicto Manquiguis.

Five soldiers were reported wounded in the three-hour firefight.

The troops in Lanao del Norte were tracking down Abdulla Macapaar, alias Commander Bravo, who was blamed for last week’s assault in Kauswagan and Kolambugan towns that left scores dead, mostly women and children.

Dozens of those killed in the area were civilians captured and used as human shields by retreating rebels before they were slaughtered.

The government has offered a P5-million reward each for the capture of Bravo and Kato, who were said to be leading 500-1,000 fighters of the 12,000-strong MILF.

In Congress, Lanao del Norte Rep. Vicente Belmonte Tuesday called for an investigation of the alleged failure of the Army and the Philippine National Police to respond to pleas for help by residents of Barangay Lapayan in Kauswagan during the MILF attack on Aug. 18.

Belmonte said that an Army encampment was only 50 to 100 meters away from Lapayan.

He said he had gone to the area and had asked soldiers why they had not responded to the MILF attack and was told that “there was no order from the higher ups.” With reports from Nikko Dizon, Norman Bordadora and Richel V. Umel, Jeoffrey Maitem, Julie Alipala, Grace Albasin, Inquirer Mindanao