[ALMASDARNEWS] Heavy festivities continue to embroil the city of Marawi, located on the southern island of Mindanao, while civilians bear the brunt of the ongoing crisis.
According to Amaq Agency, 13 government soldiers were killed during skirmishes in Marawi’s neighborhoods on Tuesday while an additional 5 were burned alive as an Islamic State ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... RPG destroyed an armored vehicle, bringing the total alleged Philippine Army corpse count to 18 for the day.
On the other hand, the Philippine Armed Forces said they had restored 90% of the city under government control due to ongoing counter-insurgency operations that have the ISIS-linked Maute and Abu Sayyaf ...also known as al-Harakat al-Islamiyya, an Islamist terror group based in Jolo, Basilan and Zamboanga. Since its inception in the early 1990s, the group has carried out bombings, kidnappings, murders, head choppings, and extortion in their uniquely Islamic attempt to set up an independent Moslem province in the Philippines. Abu Sayyaf forces probably number less than 300 cadres. The group is closely allied with remnants of Indonesia's Jemaah Islamiya and has loose ties with MILF and MNLF who sometimes provide cannon fodder... groups running low on manpower.
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Good photos and video report at the link. These reporters have some gonads [Sky News] Over four days in Marawi, Sky News watched the Philippine military carry out repeated air strikes, bombers wheeling overhead and diving towards targets in the city. The fighting is intense and sustained - mortars and helicopters mounted with machine guns are being used, as well as armored personnel carriers and ground troops.
Philippine forces train to combat militants in jungle conditions, but here they are facing urban warfare, fighting street-to-street, at times house-to-house. We saw armored vehicles reinforced with planks of wood in an improvised attempt to withstand anti-tank weaponry and rocket-propelled grenades fired by the rebels.
Drone footage from inside rebel-held territory showed a mosque believed to be used as a base - local fighters are also said to have knowledge of tunnel networks and bomb shelters beneath the city. The mosque has not been targeted by the military, but whole streets around it have been flattened. We saw large fires burning in the ruins.
One commanding officer told us some of the trapped civilians are being used as slaves and orderlies by the rebels, with some being forced to wear black robes and act as human shields. Lt Col Christopher Tampus, commander of 1st Infantry Battalion said, "Those hostages are being dressed, we have some visuals of this. They are being dressed with a black-like robe. We believe these are civilians because we can easily see how they move."
We set out to reach a family we had heard was still in touch with relatives trapped inside, but as we ran across the street to their house a bullet landed less than a meter from our team. It appeared we were being targeted.
We planned to stay in the building until the threat outside subsided, but then a fire started. It was not clear whether deliberately or not. We had to get out, but the only way was back across the same street. We lined up to make the run, one at a time, into our vehicle, crouching low inside until we had reached relative safety.
We passed a dead dog, abandoned in the road, and black graffiti as a reminder of what they were running from. "WELCOME ISIS!" one scrawled message read. Another had a picture of a skull and cross-bones beneath an ISIS slogan.
We spoke to the uncle of a young man killed fighting for the Maute group, who told us there are many more like him. He said, "In my village, the number of recruited were 10. Actually there are lots of them that have already been killed in the fighting in Marawi. There are a lot because Abdullah Maute targeted Cotabato City. He convinced a lot of teenagers..."
On Sunday, a temporary ceasefire was declared to mark the end of Ramadan, and allow a humanitarian pause. A delegation of religious leaders and volunteers, armed only with megaphones, headed out across the front line to try to negotiate the release of some of the trapped civilians. But as we waited for news, a number of shots were fired into our street, forcing everyone to take cover behind parked cars.
Three hours later, the rescue teams re-emerged, bringing with them a 14-month old girl and her mother, father, grandfather, and aunt. The family had hidden in their employer's basement for 33 days. The 14-month-old girl and her family spent 33 days hidden in a basement
His daughter-in-law had given birth while they were trapped, but the baby did not survive. The teams also brought out the body of a 72-year-old man, who had suffered a stroke, and died before he could be reached.
Even as the rescued family was being taken to hospital, the fighting in Marawi resumed. The military insists the rebel leadership is crumbling and victory is irreversible but declined to say when it might come.
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Sky News] Over four days in Marawi, Sky News watched the Philippine military carry out repeated air strikes, bombers wheeling overhead and diving towards targets in the city. The fighting is intense and sustained - mortars and helicopters mounted with machine guns are being used, as well as armored personnel carriers and ground troops.
We passed a dead dog, abandoned in the road, and black graffiti as a reminder of what they were running from. "WELCOME ISIS!" one scrawled message read. Another had a picture of a skull and cross-bones beneath an ISIS slogan.
