The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) on Saturday belittled the military’s claim it had captured a camp in Payao, Zamboanga Sibugay, that had belonged to suspected renegade rebel leader Waning Abdusalam.
MILF spokesperson Von Al Haq said that what the military captured was a community that had been deserted by its residents because of the military air strikes conducted there since Oct. 15.
“It’s not a camp as the military has been claiming but a community. The residents fled because of the military’s air and ground assaults,” he said.
Lt. Col. Randolph Cabangbang, spokesperson of the Western Mindanao Command, admitted Abdusalam’s camp did not appear to be a regular rebel encampment.
“It has huts but with fortified positions and trenches,” he said.
Cabangbang said it was easy to claim the camp was a village because it was not like any other rebel camp.
Maj. Gen. Noel Coballes, commander of the Army’s 1st Infantry Division, termed the MILF’s claim “funny.”
“How do you explain the bunkers and machine gun emplacements and the running trenches around the area?” he said.
Fortified structures
Lt. Gen. Raymundo Ferrer, head of the Western Mindanao Command based in Zamboanga City, said the camp had “fortified structures” and was rigged with land mines.
He said that soon after its fall, he visited the camp with other ranking police and military officers and even recovered a machine gun partly buried there.
Coballes said the camp, north of Talaib Point, could house about 200 men.
He said Abdusalam and his men had fled by the time Army soldiers arrived, but traces of blood could be seen everywhere.
“We had to walk for about two kilometers on marshy and mangrove areas,” Ferrer said.
Al Haq said he doubted Abdusalam was in the community at the time because its residents were “90 percent supportive of the MILF.”
Ghadzali Jaafar, MILF political affairs chief, said the MILF would not retaliate for the Payao attacks and all its forces had been told to hold defensive positions.
“We are in control of our forces on the ground,” he said.
Situation normalized
Philippine Army acting spokesperson Maj. Harold Cabunoc said “the situation in Payao had normalized.”
“We are turning over security to the Philippine National Police and there might be a Cafgu (Citizens Armed Forces Geographical Unit) detachment posted in the area as requested by the local government,” Cabunoc said.
He said the 1st Infantry Division was assisting town officials to arrange the return of local residents displaced by the fighting, while Scout Rangers continued their pursuit of bandits who might have slipped past military and police cordons.
Cabunoc said scene-of-the-crime operatives had determined that there were bodies in 15 shallow graves the troops discovered at Talaib Point, where the rebels had apparently retreated with their wounded and dying comrades.
He said an imam was present during the inspection of the graves in order to avoid offending religious sensitivities among the locals.
Cabunoc emphasized that no further diggings were made after the operatives discovered the presence of human bodies in the graves. “We only wanted to verify that the graves had bodies and not weapons,” he said. Jeoffrey Maitem and Orlando Dinoy, Inquirer Mindanao, and DJ Yap in Manila