A suspected member of Islamic State-linked Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters believed to be involved in a recent clash with members of the government partner Moro Islamic Liberation Front was killed during a law enforcement operation in Pandag, Maguindanao on Sunday.
Soldiers belonging to the Army’s 40th Infantry Battalion (40IB) were conducting a checkpoint in Barangay Malangit, Pandag, when Kalinga Kamsa, an alleged BIFF member, passed by and was flagged down around 6:15 a.m.
“He refused and tried to escape,” according to Maj. Gen. Diosdado Carreon, the Army’s 6th Infantry Division commander, in a report to Western Mindanao Command chief, Lt. Gen. Cirilito Sobejana.
Hours earlier, Kamsa managed to elude 40IB troopers who were about to arrest him following a tip from civilians that he was keeping guns and explosives in his home.
Kamsa fled on a motorbike and upon approaching the checkpoint, Carreon said Kamsa ignored the order of authorities to stop and instead opened fire on government forces.
The soldiers returned fire, killing Kamsa on the spot.
Seized from the suspect were a .45-caliber pistol and two fragmentation grenades kept inside the sling bag.
Carreon said Kamsa had been placed under surveillance for a month after reports indicated he belonged to the BIFF.
“While we are continuously conducting focused military operations, we are encouraging the remaining BIFF combatants to surrender and avail of the government’s livelihood programs prepared for them,” Sobejano said in a statement.
A weekend gunbattle that transpired in Shariff Saydona Mustapha town in this province has left seven MILF members and four BIFF rebels killed due to long-standing land conflict.
Government forces have secured the peripheries of Shariff Saydona Mustapha to prevent a spillover of the skirmishes.
Meanwhile, in Sayduna, Mustapa in Maguindanao, the bodies of slain members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front were discovered to have been mutiliated, following a clash on Friday with extremist militants, reportedly inspired by the dreaded Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.
Relatives of the slain MILF national guards, said the fatalities were beheaded, their eyes gouged and their heads either “defaced” or marked “x” with bolo slits.
The relatives, speaking on condition they would not be named as they fear for their lives, said the fate of their kin in some “sadistic hands” is “unthinkable” even in the local “culture of violence” in rido which means family feud.
Mayor Zamzamin Ampatuan of nearby Radja Buayan town said he also received the same report from residents, saying the MILF men were hacked even when they were already dead.
The parent of one of the slain men said all seven fatalities were buried in a common grave, as their bodies were mutiliated beyond recognition.
Their neighbors said the men were bomb- attacked late night Friday by local ISIS in their MILF military post in Sitio Tinulusan, Barangay Dasawaw.
Emerging from their post, which also served as their second home, the seven men were “held-hostage” while trying to seek refuge, and were later executed “mercilessly” with bladed weapons early Saturday.
Locals believed the killings were a form of “punishment” on the MILF men (since their organization has embraced peace with the government) by the extremists under one Salahudin Hassan, who is said to be a Singaporean. With PNA
