Rescue of SAF troops losing hope recounted

It was the first time information emerged about the condition of the Special Action Force (SAF) commandos who were rescued from the site of the daylong clash that left 44 SAF troopers, 17 Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) rebels and three civilians dead.

“They did not want to move anymore, like they were just waiting to die. They had dead and wounded they could not leave behind,” said 2nd Lt. Gabriel Bannoya Jr., executive officer of the 61st Division Reconnaissance Company (DRC) of the Philippine Army.

“We had to keep picking up after them,” said 2nd Lt. Jeymark Mateo, leader of the platoon that rescued or retrieved the eight dead, 11 wounded and 17 uninjured members of the 84th Special Action Company (SAC).

In their riveting account, Mateo and Bannoya recalled how they extricated the 84th SAC troopers before the joint committee investigating the Jan. 25 Mamasapano clash at the House of Representatives on Wednesday.

The corpses were so heavy each one had to be carried by four Army soldiers, sometimes by just two, who had to drag the bodies during the dangerous trek through a cornfield and across a river.

It was on the evening of Jan. 25 when the Army soldiers finally reached the “battle-stressed” commandos from 84th SAC in Pidsandawan village in Mamasapano, Maguindanao province, several hours after the commandos had killed Zulkifli bin Hir, a Malaysian-born terrorist also known as Marwan.

They found the commandos exhausted, hungry and fast losing hope.

As they ran for their lives, the commandos were so disoriented they were dropping their weapons and equipment on the ground. The dead were being left behind. One of the commandos was found sleeping under a tree and had to be shaken awake.

The two Army officers’ story gave rise to new questions about Mamasapano: Were the parties honoring the ceasefire, which should already have been in place at that point? What was the exit strategy of the SAF units executing “Oplan Exodus,” the covert operation to capture Marwan, Malaysian terrorist Amin Baco and their Filipino associate Basit Usman?

Shortcomings of SAF unit

On the other hand, the testimony of the four Army officers at the House hearing also showed there might have been shortcomings on the part of the third SAF unit assigned to support the 84th and the 55th.

Staff Sgt. Whilmer Jaranilla, team leader of the 61st DRC, said his unit spotted members of the 45th SAC resting “under the shade of banana trees” some 700 meters away from where the 55th SAC was engaged in a gun battle with enemy forces.

Bannoya corroborated the information, saying he also saw the 45th “just lying around.”

He recalled telling the 45th troopers to move to a better defensive position, and gave them food and water.

In the evening, the signal finally came to enter the area where the 84th SAC troopers were trapped.

 

‘Battle-stressed’

“The first thing they said to me was: ‘It’s good to see you, Sir. We thought this was where we would die,’” Bannoya said.

“I think our [arrival] lifted their spirits,” he said.

“They were battle-stressed. [During the long time] they spent there, they had no food or water. There were wounded among them, many dead,” Bannoya said.

At first, he said, the most senior SAF officer could not even give an accurate count of the casualties.

“Some of those they counted dead were actually just wounded,” he said.

The final count was eight dead, 11 wounded, 17 uninjured, he said.

Military ‘not remiss’

Magdalo Rep. Gary Alejano, who presented Mateo, Jaranilla and two other Army officers to the investigative committee, said the accounts of the soldiers showed at least one thing: “The Armed Forces of the Philippines was not remiss in helping out the SAF. Otherwise, more than 44 of them would have died.”

The US-trained 84th SAC, also called Seaborne, was the strike force that infiltrated into Moro rebel-controlled Mamasapano early on Jan. 25 to get Marwan and the two other terrorists.

But the mission went wrong when an explosive device went off in Marwan’s hut in Pidsandawan, waking up armed groups in the community who poured out of their huts and attacked the withdrawing commandos.

Later, fighting would also erupt between MILF rebels and commandos from the 55th SAC, the blocking force for the 84th, in nearby Tukanalipao village. Most of the 44 dead on the SAF side belonged to the 55th.

Left in the lurch

The sacked commander of the SAF, Director Getulio Napeñas, however, told the House panel that he stood by his assertion that the military left the commandos “hanging in the air.”

“There were no reinforcements that came to support the beleaguered SAF,” he said, citing his communications with AFP units on the ground to provide artillery support.

“Now, their tenor is they’re blaming us,” Napeñas said.

Military commanders in Mindanao earlier said they did not send reinforcements to help the pinned-down SAF commandos because they had no complete information about the operation.

Napeñas earlier admitted that he kept the operation secret out of fear that it might be compromised.

Brig. Gen. Edmundo Pangilinan, commander of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division in Central Mindanao, defended himself from the charge that he ordered his men to hold artillery fire because of the peace process with the MILF.

“I never said to hold artillery fire because of the peace process. I said to hold until we get the full details,” he said.

‘We trust each other’

The officer in charge of the Philippine National Police, Deputy Director General Leonardo Espina, dismissed suggestions of a rift between the police and the military.

“Whatever happened in Mamasapano was a matter of ground decisions not to share information with some AFP elements… This is not reflective of the relationship between the PNP and the AFP, which is very strong,” he said.

The AFP Chief of Staff, Gen. Gregorio Pio Catapang Jr., said: “We trust each other. It’s only Napeñas who does not trust the AFP.”

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