TF finds 17 bodies, 5 of them headless

SEVENTEEN bodies of civilians, five of them decapitated, were recovered in Marawi City, the military’s Task Force Marawi reported Wednesday.

This was confirmed by military spokesman Brig. Gen. Restituto Padilla, who also reported the recovery of the remains of two foreign terrorists.

Earlier, task force spokesman Lt. Col. Jo-Ar Herrera said the Maute and Abu Sayyaf terrorists have been beheading some of their hostages and turning women captives into sex slaves.

Padilla said the victims’ bodies were brought to Iligan City.

Padilla said government forces have so far recorded 299 dead terrorists since battle erupted on May 23.

He said two of the recovered bodies were foreign-looking men, probably from the Middle East.

Asked how many foreign terrorists had been killed in the battle, Padilla could not give an exact figure.

The military had earlier reported that some 10 foreign terrorists were in the battle and later, an intelligence report claimed only one was killed during the early days of the conflict.

Of the 299 killed terrorists, Padilla said more than half were accounted for by body count.

Multiple sources from the military said more than 100 terrorists including some foreign fighters were still inside the battle zone, putting up resistance to advancing government troops.

Padilla said the military still has no definite deadline as to when the Marawi siege will end.

The military had been unsuccessful so far in meeting deadlines to clear Marawi of the terrorists.

“We are not setting any deadline and I have been citing why, because of the complexity of the environment and the terrain,” he said.

Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana had said the conflict would end in about two weeks, but Padilla did not commit to meeting this deadline or gaurantee that Marawi would be liberated by the fourth Monday of July, when President Rodrigo Duterte delivers his second State-of-the-Nation Address.

“We are trying to finish this as soon as we can because it is not good to prolong this kind of fighting,” Padilla said.

Padilla warned that the ongoing campaign against Maute terrorists might end up like the ongoing fight in Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria, which is continuing up until now.

The military, which had stopped giving deadlines, also said that the number of civilians killed in the ongoing clashes could “significantly increase,” citing the challenges in the battlefield.

Padilla noted that there were still civilians, either trapped or held hostage, and clearing the tall buildings in the city center where the gunmen appear to be concentrated was a slow and dangerous process because of booby traps.

“They have placed sophisticated traps and we don’t want to put in danger the lives of soldiers, that is why we’re careful in doing this,” the military spokesman said.

“We’re asking for understanding that what our soldiers are facing is a challenging battlefield environment. It’s challenging, and what we are working out is to finish them in the soonest time possible but this isn’t fast,” he added.

He added that the military got hold of footage showing the terrorists carrying out executions.

“We are not certain on exactly how many civilians [have been killed] because the number you have now, which is 27, may increase significantly once we are able to validate all these information,” Padilla said.

“There have been a significant number [of slain civilians] seen in the video but again we could not include many of these [to the official death toll] because we have not validated,” he added.

To stop this, Padilla said that it is important for Abu Sayyaf leader Isnilon Hapilon, who is seen as the leader of ISIS-allied groups in Southeast Asia, to be caught “dead or alive.”

Duterte has placed a bounty of P10 million on Hapilon’s head.

Various religious groups on Wednesday urged the public to unite and simultaneously pray for peace in Marawi City on July 7 at noon. With John Paolo Bencito and Rio N. Araja

Francisco Tuyay