Fighting erupts in Maguindanao – report

Members of the breakaway Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF). INQUIRER FILE PHOTO

COTABATO CITY, Philippines – Fighting erupted Monday dawn in Maguindanao, forcing hundreds of civilians to evacuate to safer grounds.

Abu Misry Mama, spokesperson for the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF), a breakaway group of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), told the Inquirer by phone the skirmishes started after soldiers fired rounds of mortars towards their position in the village of Ganta in Datu Piang town at around 4:00 a.m.

Mama said as of 8:25 a.m., exchange of gunfire between their forces and soldiers could be heard from the ground.

“We have a camp in the area but we fear innocent civilians might be hit by their mortars,” he said.

Colonel Dickson Hermoso, spokesperson for the military’s 6th Infantry Division, was not picking up his mobile phone when the Inquirer tried to call him Monday morning.

Mama said a fighting also transpired in the town of Sultan sa Barongis, also in Maguindanao on Sunday afternoon where a member of their group was injured.

In the town of Pikit, North Cotabato, a military operation on Sunday night against BIFF militants forced civilians to flee their homes in the village of Kabasalan.

The fighting occurred just two days after the MILF and government signed in Kuala Lumpur the last annex of to the Bangsamoro framework agreement that seeks to end the decades-long secessionist movement.