FAMILY FEUD: Civilians mill around one of two vehicles fired upon by gunmen in Guindulungan, Maguindanao, on Sunday that left nine people dead and was believed to have been triggered by a family feud. —PHOTO SHARED ON FACEBOOK BY ESKIE HAMID
Updated @ 10:39 p.m., Feb. 13, 2022
COTABATO CITY, Maguindanao, Philippines — The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) has deployed a team to investigate a bloody incident where one of their senior commanders and eight followers were killed in an ambush on Saturday in Guindulungan town of Maguindanao province.
Von Al Haq, spokesperson of the MILF, told the Inquirer by phone on Sunday that their ceasefire team was on the ground to assess the situation and help prevent the incident, which police believed had been caused by “rido” (family feud or clan war), from getting worse.
“It’s confirmed that those people [who were] ambushed were our men. The suspects are not connected with us,” he said, refuting what Capt. Fayeed Cana, the regional spokesperson for the Bangsamoro police, claimed on Saturday that the alleged attacker, a certain Jordan Mama Lintang, alias “Commander Jordan,” also belonged to Bangsamoro Islamic Armed Forces (BIAF), the armed component of the MILF.
Long-standing enmity
Al Haq said the MILF was also checking if the ambush was related to the elections in May.
Gunmen allegedly led by Lintang and his son Morsid ambushed the two-vehicle convoy of Peges Mamasainged, also known as “Commander Black Magic” of BIAF, around 8:30 a.m. on Saturday in Tambunan village of Guindulungan, the police earlier said.
Mamasainged was traveling to a nearby village reportedly to settle a long-running rido with another clan when he was killed along with five relatives and three other individuals. Authorities said some persons were also injured during the ambush but they did not release details on the wounded.
“The motive of the incident is the long-standing family feud of the involved parties,” said Police Col. Jibin Bongcayao, the police director for the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao.
In predominantly Muslim areas of Mindanao, hostilities among feuding families could go on for decades if families failed to settle their differences through a peace pact mediated by religious leaders or respected elders.
Political rivalries, ancestral land claims, disputes on local fiefdoms, as well as election-related feuds, are usually the cause of clan wars in Mindanao