2 children dead, brothers wounded in Basilan blast

ISABELA CITY, Basilan— Since they don’t have real marbles, Hamudi Anali, 6, and his younger brother Alkudzri, 5, played with coffee beans outside their home in Barangay Bohe Piang in Al Barka town.

Inside their hut, their elder brother Almudzri, 14, was doing household chores, while the youngest, 3-year-old Albandal, was sleeping in a hammock.

From the inside, Almudzri could hear his brothers laugh. Then, a loud explosion.

Seconds later, he felt a sharp pain on his back and discovered he was bleeding. He turned around and saw his brother, Albandal, crying in his hammock. He, too, was bleeding.

Outside the house, Almudzri saw his two brothers lying on the ground, their heads blasted, innards out.

Almudzri wanted to run to ask for help but the shelling continued.

Ibnusalam Anali, father of the boys, said his sons were hit by mortar fire from the military in Sitio Bohe Beggang at 3:30 p.m. on Dec. 2.

While Ibnusalam did not witness the incident as he was in a nearby village with his daughter when it happened, he said only the military had the capacity to do it.

“The military keeps on shelling [the area], and no one, except government soldiers, keeps mortars,” he told the Inquirer.

But Abdulnaris Jakliran, barangay chair of Bohe Piang, said the military had denied it bombed the area.

He said government troops occupied Sitio Bohe Beggang last month when they were pursuing Abu Sayyaf bandits in the nearby village of Baguindan.

“It could be possible that they left a mortar shell in Sitio Bohe Beggang,” Jakliran said.

A military official, however, said it was an improvised explosive device (IED), not a mortar shell, that hit the children.

“While the four children were playing, a sudden explosion, believed to [have come from] an IED, happened in their location,” Col. Thomas Cirilo Donato, commander of 104th Army Brigade and head of Joint Task Force Basilan, said in a statement.

The military’s Western Mindanao Command has yet to issue a statement on the incident.

Senior Supt. Datumama Mokalid, Basilan provincial police director, said they could not say who fired the mortar shells as both the military and the Abu Sayyaf are known to keep this type of weapon in their arsenal.

“We are still investigating where the mortar [fire] came from,” Mokalid said.

Gov. Mujiv Hataman of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao said the investigation should continue. “Whoever is the culprit will have to answer for what happened,” he said.

Dr. Arlyn Jawad-Jumao-as of the Save the Children of Basilan said there have been a number of children killed after finding and playing with abandoned, unexploded ordnance.

“It is saddening that limbs and lives of innocent children are lost because of this. I feel bad because these could be the kids who may have turned over their precious toy guns for other toys, and they died like that,” Jumao-as said.

In October, some 700 children from Al Barka, Tipo-Tipo and Unkaya Pukan towns turned over their toy guns in exchange for sports equipment and school supplies as part of the Festival of Love and Peace initiated by the Save the Children of Basilan.