COTABATO CITY, Philippines—The military on Tuesday said it found bombs and bomb-making materials in what it described as a training camp of the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF) in Maguindanao province, which soldiers took over on Monday.
Capt. Joanne Petinglay, spokesperson of the 6th Infantry Division (ID), said the captured BIFF camp was in Sitio Pedtad in Barangay Midpantakan, General Salipada K. Pendatun town.
“The facility was used by the rebels in training their recruits,” she said.
Lt. Col. Markton Abu, head of the Army’s 3rd Infantry Battalion, said the training facility was captured after the military launched artillery attacks on BIFF positions near the Liguasan Marsh.
He said BIFF forces manning the camp fled the area at the height of the artillery barrage and had broken up into smaller groups.
Abu was not certain if any BIFF member was killed in the military offensive.
But BIFF spokesperson Abu Misri Mama said on the phone that the BIFF, a group of guerrillas who broke off from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front following disagreement over a peace deal with the government, suffered no casualty.
He also denied that a BIFF camp had fallen, saying the BIFF does not maintain a camp because its members are “always mobile.”
Maj. Gen. Eduardo Mangilinan, 6th ID commander, said on Tuesday that the military launched the offensive against the BIFF following BIFF attacks on government forces in the provinces of Maguindanao and Sultan Kudarat last week.
The attacks killed two soldiers and five BIFF members, Mangilinan said.
Col. Melquiadez Feliciano, head of the 601st Infantry Brigade, identified the slain soldiers as Cpl. Daniel Valenzuela and Pfc. Karl Bernie Arriba.
“Our men managed to return fire, and they killed five rebels,” he said.
On Monday, Mangilinan led soldiers in an emotionally charged ceremony for Valenzuela and Arriba at the 6th ID headquarters in Datu Odin Sinsuat town before handing over posthumous awards to their families.
“This is the saddest New Year for all of us,” a relative of Arriba said.
“We thought everybody was giving peace a chance. It seems not,” the relative said.
Mangilinan said soldiers were now hunting the group of BIFF members led by a Commander Sukarno Sapal, alias Jok.
“We are seriously going after this terrorist group in order to send them a strong message that their plans to spoil the peace and development that have already been felt in the region will not succeed,” he said. Reports from Edwin Fernandez, Jeoffrey Maitem and Nash Maulana, Inquirer Mindanao