MILF tells forces: Honor ceasefire

The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) has ordered its men to honor a ceasefire agreement with the government while maintaining a defensive position in their areas, according to an MILF official.

Von Al Haq, MILF spokesperson for military affairs, said the Front would reiterate this directive to its forces in Mindanao in a gathering this month.

“It could be our chairman, Ebrahim Murad, who will read the Central Committee’s position to uphold and observe the ceasefire [and] to maintain a defensive position,” Al Haq said.

He said MILF leaders would also explain to their fighters and civilian supporters their decision to oust Ameril Umra Kato from the group. Kato leads a breakaway force of 200 to 300 fighters, which was blamed for a series of attack on civilian communities in Central Mindanao after the failed signing of the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain in 2008.

“We will coordinate our event with the military to prevent [any] untoward incident. We don’t want Kato and his men to stay within our areas recognized by the government,” Al Haq said.

Peacekeepers

He said they were confident that foreign peacekeepers would clear them in a probe over last month’s clash in Al-Barka town in Basilan, which left 19 Army soldiers dead.

The MILF has maintained that their forces attacked because the soldiers encroached on their area without coordination. “We are confident the probe of the International Monitoring Team (IMT) will clear our organization. In the first place, they [government soldiers] were the ones who attacked our position,” Al Haq said.

But Lt. Gen. Arturo Ortiz Jr., Army commander, said they are “more than confident” that an impartial investigation by international observers would show that government troops were treacherously attacked by MILF rebels in Al-Barka on October 18.

In his visit to Fort Magsaysay in Nueva Ecija on Monday, Ortiz said it was the MILF which violated the ceasefire agreement when its forces, led by its deputy commander in Basilan, Dan Laksaw Asnawi, ambushed Special Forces teams who were after “lawless elements.”

After an eight-hour gunbattle, 19 Special Forces members were killed. Six of them were captured alive and later found dead. Fourteen others were wounded.

The MILF said five of their men were killed and three others wounded.

No surrender

The government has since vowed to bring the perpetrators to justice while the MILF refused demands to surrender Asnawi.

“We are more than confident that we did not violate any agreement (with the MILF),” Ortiz told reporters during his inspection of the newly constructed and renovated facilities in Fort Magsaysay

“We did the right thing. We did not violate any part of the [ceasefire] agreement because the site of the encounter was 4 kilometers outside of what they were claiming to be as [the MILF’s] ‘area of temporary stay (ATS).’ They were ambushed far outside from what they were claiming to be the ATS,” he said.