Maute won’t able to sustain fight for long—Palace

Presidential Spokesperson Ernesto Abella. KING RODRIGUEZ/ Presidential Photo (FILE)

The terrorist attack in Marawi City might have been “well-planned” but Malacañang on Saturday said the Maute Group would not be able to “sustain” fighting for a long time.

Presidential Spokesperson Ernesto Abella, in an interview over state-run dzRB, addressed concerns that the terror group seemed to be not running out of ammunition.

“As to ammunition, as we have mentioned before, this rebellious activity turns out to have been well-planned, and adequate preparations had been made,” Abella said.

“They had also stocked up on ammunition they got from the city jail and armories that they ransacked. They have also recovered government items they foraged from other areas of the city,” he added.

The Palace official said “the enemy deliberately chose to retreat to the commercial area of the city so they can sustain themselves and their ammunition, so they could forage from there.”

READ: No proof Maute got foreign funding – military

Despite this, Abella said the terrorist would soon run out of ammunition.

“It is definite, however, that they will not be able to sustain it for long,” he said.

In a Palace briefing on Friday, Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) spokesperson Brig. Gen. Restituto Padilla Jr. said the government would never run out of ammunition despite a conventional bomb killing 10 soldiers due to a bungled airstrike, which indicates the military ran out of precision-guided missiles.

“Your Armed Forces will never run out of ammunition, my dear,” Padilla told reporters.

“We have the general arsenal to keep on producing. And even if they want to keep this fight up to the end of this month, or this week, or whatever, we are determined to take care of all these forces that have brought violence and disturbed the peace to the peace-loving community of Marawi,” he added.