BIFF claims getting bullets from soldiers

Members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front AP FILE PHOTO

COTABATO CITY, Philippines – A group of rebels who broke away from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front are being supplied ammunition by government soldiers to keep their operations going, a rebel spokesman claimed Tuesday.

But the local military command immediately dismissed the claim as pure propaganda.

Abu Misry Mama, spokesperson of the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters, told the Philippine Daily Inquirer by phone that soldiers, some of them officers, from the Sixth Infantry Division have been selling them ammunition ever since they started their organization in 2011.

“These men in uniform are not directly meeting us but they have their own middle man for us,” Mama said.

But Colonel Dickson Hermoso, spokesperson for the Army’s Sixth Division, branded Mama’s claim propaganda.

“It’s not true. They don’t have basis,” he said.

On May 12, three soldiers were killed when BIFF rebels detonated a homemade bomb they planted on a bridge in Datu Unsay town in Maguindanao.

The BIFF is the armed wing of the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Movement (BIFM), which broke away from the MILF over disagreements regarding the conduct of peace talks with the government.

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