COTABATO CITY - A board member in Maguindanao province survived an armed attack on his house by suspected Muslim Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) rebels, an Army official reported Thursday.
This developed as two MILF guerrillas were killed and a soldier was injured in a clash inside Buliok complex in Pikit, North Cotabato.
Maj. Julieto Ando, Army's 6th Infantry division spokesman, told radio station dxMS here that MILF rebels, led by Commander Abdul Wahid Tundok of the Front's 104th Brigade, peppered with bullets the house of Maguindanao provincial board member Datu Aziz Uttoh in barangay Lower Salvo, Datu Saudi Ampatuan town, on Tuesday around 11 p.m.
Ando said civilian volunteer-member escorts of Uttoh returned fire, resulting to a two-hour firefight before Tundok's group fled leaving two live rocket propelled grenade ammunition.
According to Ando, the attack came after the November 9 incident in same town, where Tamano Tundok, brother of Commander Abdul, shot dead Bobby Sinsuat, a close security escort of Uttoh, near the public market.
"We asked both the government and MILF Coordinating Committee on Cessation of Hostilities to look into the incident for it was a violation to the existing cease-fire agreement," Ando said.
The government and MILF declared a bilateral truce on July 19 as part of confidence-building measures in preparation for the resumption of the peace talks in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to end the decades-old rebellion in Mindanao.
MILF spokesman Eid Kabalu said their fighters in the field are strictly observing the cease-fire.
Earlier on the same day in Pikit town, Col. Isagani Cachuela, Army's 602nd Infantry Brigade commander, said wounded Cpl. Juanito Estoque of the 40th Infantry Battalion was conducting a routine foot patrol with other soldiers around 7:30 p.m. on Tuesday, when they were fired upon by suspected Pentagon members in Buliok.
Cachuela said the soldiers managed to return fire, killing two of the suspected Moro rebels before the latter fled.
The rebels left behind one M-14 and M-16 rifles and assorted ammunition.
"The armed group is under MILF commander Wahid Halil," Cachuela noted.
Buliok complex is situated inside the 220,000 hectare Liguasan Marsh in the borders of Maguindanao and North Cotabato provinces, was MILF's former lair that fell in the hands of government after February 11 war in Central Mindanao.
Meanwhile, the Task Force Detainees, a nongovernment human-rights organization in Western and Central Mindanao, found a powerful United States-made bomb in barangay Talitay, also in Pikit.
Western and Central Mindanao Task Force Detainees regional officer Danny Reyes said they were conducting an ocular inspection in the area Wednesday morning, when his colleagues found the unexploded explosive.
Reyes said the bomb could have been dropped by the government's airplanes at the height of February 11 war in Buliok, but did not explode.
Posted by Dan Darling 2003-11-14 1:44:25 PM||
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