[AFP] Months after being routed from Marawi, rebels are making a new and deadly attempt to set up a Southeast Asian caliphate in the same region. The gunmen have mustered a force of about 200 fighters and fought a series of skirmishes with security forces this year after troops retook the city last October.Colonel Romeo Brawner said, "They have not abandoned their objective to create a caliphate in South-east Asia. Mindanao is the most fertile ground. Our countrymen are more vulnerable (to recruitment)."
Struggling with poverty and armed Muslim insurgencies, Mindanao must improve its supervision of Islamic schools, where most young gunmen are recruited, he added.
Gunmen who escaped during the early days of the operation to recapture Marawi are leading the recruitment effort, flush with cash, guns and jewellery looted from the city's banks and private homes. The recruits are mostly locals, but an unspecified number of Indonesians, some with bomb-making skills, have recently arrived there, Brawner said.
The siege of Marawi forced the Philippine military, more used to low-intensity jungle warfare against guerillas, to reorganize and to rewrite their doctrines, with a new emphasis on urban warfare training, he added.
Mindanao military officials said Maute gunmen murdered three traders in the town of Piagapo, near Marawi, last November. Last month, police arrested three suspects over the Piagapo killings. The military also reported skirmishes with Maute gunmen in the towns of Masiu and Pagayawan, near Marawi last month. On February 8, the military killed three militants in Pantar, another neighboring town.