60 flee strife-torn Zamboanga; seek refuge in Cebu City

At least 60 people, half of them children, embarked on a 21-hour journey to Cebu City after they fled the fighting between government troops and Moro rebels in Zamboanga City.

Residents of Sitio Dakilang Pito in barangay Punta Princesa were alarmed when a truck-load of people arrived in Tres de Abril St. at around 5 p.m. Wednesday and crammed the compound where jeepney operator Sarah Mae Angeles Kahal-Basilio lives.

“They were speaking in mixed Tagalog and a dialect we couldn’t understand and we had no idea what’s going on,” a resident, who declined to be identified, told Cebu Daily News. The strangers were speaking in Chavacano, a Spanish-based dialect widely spoken in Zamboanga.

Anxious neighbors were further agitated when they learnt where the strangers came from and rumors started to fly that “MNLF rebels” have inflitrated their community.

To quell speculations, Angeles-Basilio, who has been living in the neighborhood for five years, yesterday went to the Punta Princesa Police Station and asked the police to check on her visitors.

City Hall officials, who were likewise caught by surprise when CDN told them about the refugees from Zamboanga, scrambled a team from the local disaster agency.

“Lisod ni nga sitwasyon. Dili ta gusto mamasangil pero kailangan maniguro ta ug klaruhon natog assess kung kinsa jud ni sila,” said Simeon Romarate, executive director of Cebu City Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Council.

(This is a difficult situation. We don’t want to make accusations, but we have to make sure and clearly assess who these people are.)

Policemen from the Investigation and Detection Management Branch of the Cebu City Police Office who earlier took down the names of the “refugees” and interviewed the adults in the group said they’re convinced that they were indeed displaced from the fighting in Zamboanga.

According to Sherhan Angeles-Daung, 39 they all belong to one clan and lived in barangay Talon-talon in Zamboanga City which is one of the villages overrun by the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) rebels when they attempted to march to the Zamboanga City Hall to raise their flag on Sept. 9.

Angeles-Daung said they left Zamboanga Tuesday morning and motored to Dipolog City on board a truck and a sports utility vehicle. They stayed overnight in Dipolog before heading for Dapitan City where they took a roll-on/roll-off ferry to Samboan town, the southernmost tip of Cebu province.

From Samboan, the refugees travelled to Cebu City and went straight to their relative’s house in barangay Punta Princesa.

Among the refugees was Maria Teresa Angeles-Kahal, mother of Sarah Mae who operates a fleet of passenger jeepneys in Cebu City.

Maria Teresa, who is into the trading of fish, vegetables and fruits in Zamboanga, said they were at first hesitant to leave their town but the continued heavy fighting between the soldiers and the rebels and the chaotic situation in the evacuation centers made them decide to take their chances and flee to Cebu.

“Ang among life ani, back to zero jud kay among negosyo, nalugi tungod sa gubat (Our life is set back o zero as we lost our business due to the fighting),” she said.

Angeles-Daung said the last straw came when a six-year-old child and a two-month old baby in their community were hit by stray bullets and the children in the family have been traumatized.

“My five-year-old son Sherman would not stop crying each time they hear gunfire. We couldn’t sleep as we fear that our houses might be hit by mortar fire or the rebels would come in and take us hostage or burn our houses down,” she said as he illustrated that their house is near an area where soldiers have set up camp.

Recalling how the fighting escalated, Maria Teresa said they thought authorities encountered smugglers in a shootout when gunfire rang out at around 1 a.m of Sept. 9.

Petty Officer 3 Jose Audrey Bañares, a Cebuano soldier assigned to the Naval Special Operations Group, was killed in that encounter after he was hit in a gunbattle when his group engaged MNLF rebels who attacked the city from the sea.

“At least two hours lang ang among pinakataas na tulog in one day (We could only sleep for just two hours a day since the fighting started),” she said. On their first night in Cebu, no one from among the children in the group cried in the middle of the night. They had their first peaceful sleep in 18 days although most of them just slept in jeepneys parked in the compound. Maria Teresa said they will go back to Zamboanga as soon as the fighting ends. / with Correspondent Jose Santino Bunachita