CHIEF’S ORDERS With a streamer praising President Duterte in the background, a combat-ready officer stands guard on Palanca Street, Manila, as several residents are brought to the police headquarters for questioning on Friday. —Marianne Bermudez
If Mayor Joseph Estrada’s memory serves him right, the last time the city’s Muslim district experienced a police operation this big was during the Marcos regime.
Seven people—including a barangay chair—were killed and more than 200 others were rounded up on Friday morning as officers in combat gear brought the Duterte administration’s antidrug campaign inside Quiapo’s Islamic Center.
Among those taken for questioning was an alleged commander of the Bangsamoro Islamic Armed Forces (BIAF), the armed wing of the Moro
Islamic Liberation Front.
The National Capital Region Police Office (NCRPO) said the operation was intended to serve search warrants on the homes of suspected drug pushers in the area.
According to a statement from City Hall, among those killed was Barangay 648 chair Faiz Macabato, former barangay councilor Marik Bayanton, and drug suspect Gaus Macabato. The four other male fatalities remained unidentified at press time.
Four were killed on Fraternal Street and three on Palanca after they “resisted” and fired at the policemen instead of giving way, said Supt. Olivia Sagaysay, commander of Manila Police District’s (MPD) Station 8, whose members also took part in at 9:30 a.m. operation.
The NCRPO director, Chief Supt. Oscar Albayalde, said the operation involved a 300-member force assembled by the NCRPO, MPD, Special Action Force, Highway Patrol Group (HPG), Criminal Investigation and Detection Group, and the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency.
“The chairman and the two others, instead of helping the police serve the search warrants, put up resistance so that the warrants would not be served,’’ Albayalde said. “The other four (fatalities) fought it out with the police operatives.”
It remained unclear if any of the fatalities were the subject of the warrants.
Albayalde said more than 200 people from the area were rounded up and brought to the MPD headquarters after the operation for investigators to check their involvement in illegal drugs.
City Hall said one of the detained men was an alleged commander of the BIAF, identified as Sambetory Macaraas Sarip, 33.
Albayalde said two shotguns, six .38-caliber revolvers, a 9-mm pistol, two .45-caliber pistols, two hand grenades and rounds of ammunition, as well as 60 sachets of suspected “shabu” were confiscated during the operation.
Six vehicles and 102 motorcycles were also seized by the HPG, he said.
Mayor Estrada noted that “this is just the second time that the Islamic Center has been raided; the first was during the Marcos administration. I hope we help each other so that (this) community will be clean, safe and drug-free.”