ZAMBOANGA CITY: Moro rebels holding out in this city have vowed to fight and die as martyrs as their standoff with the military in southern Philippines entered its 17th day.
Media reports quoted military officials as saying that some of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) fighters taunted soldiers, shouting: “Come here so we can behead you!".
Asked what the Army’s elite troopers shouted back, Lt. Col. Ramon Zagala, the military spokesman, said: “None.”
“If they did, they would have compromised their positions. They should not be distracted from their primary mission,” Zagala told the Philippines Inquirer while narrating what junior officers had told him.
A total of 128 combatants—110 MNLF rebels and 18 soldiers and policemen—have been killed and 161 have been wounded. Ninety-three rebels have been captured and 45 others have surrendered.
On Tuesday, news team saw an SF-260 Marchetti plane drop nine 250-pound bombs on Sumatra Island, just across the mangrove area in Barangay Talon-Talon, around 1 pm. Eight of the bombs exploded.
An hour later, MG520 helicopters fired machine guns on the island. A Navy vessel also joined the attack. The Moro fighters replied only with sniper fire.
The media also reported that the Moro rebels were still fighting because they had ample supply of ammunition and President Benigno Aquino has ordered the military to find out who was supplying the ammunition.
Aquino had spent more than a week monitoring from an undisclosed location in the city the final military offensive to crush the estimated 30 to 40 rebels holding 20 hostages.
“They don’t seem to run out of [ammunition]. He has asked [military] officials to look into that,” deputy presidential spokesperson Abigail Valte told reporters in Malacañang.
There were reports that the rebels stockpiled weapons and ammunition in Zamboanga City long before the 200 Moro force led by Habier Malik stormed ashore early on Sept. 9 and held hundreds families hostage.
One free hostage Maricel Teves, who was wounded in captivity, said the rebels also had medicines and they treated her.
“They have supplies (of medicines),” Teves said.
She said the rebels knew the area, moving around the villages of Santa Catalina, Santa Barbara, Kasanyangan and Rio Hondo.
“They said they planned this a long time ago and that their firearms were already in these areas,” Teves said.
She said she had heard Paul Aukasa, an MNLF member from Basilan province, say that the group planned the attack even before the month-long feast of Ramadan (July 10 to Aug. 9).
Former hostage Junior Morte, 60, said the MNLF rebels conserved their ammunition.
“They don’t shoot because they have to. They shoot if the need arises and if they need to defend or protect their position,” Morte said.
“I’ve seen how they deploy snipers, and they wait while the other side (military) is delivering heavy fire on their position,” he said.
Morte said Malik had “maps and contacts in the villages.”
He said Malik had bragged to the hostages that his group had support in the villages of Rio Hondo, Mariki, Talon-Talon and Mampang and that he and his men had enough food and ammunition.
Morte, who escaped from the rebels on Sept. 13, said the MNLF fighters did not carry boxes of ammunition.
“They just go to the houses where they left their supplies,” he said.
In a talk with reporters on Thursday, President Aquino called on the remaining rebels to surrender to prevent further bloodshed.
“Life is precious to me,” Aquino said, addressing the rebel holdouts. “You may want to consider your life precious as well.”
Aquino gave the rebels from Nur Misuari’s faction of the MNLF an ultimatum and has also ordered the filing of criminal charges against Misuari who was believed to gone into hiding in neighbouring Jolo island.
“It is not too late to end this, so we can put a stop to the deaths and injuries. That is in your hands,” the President said.
But the remaining followers of Misuari in Zamboanga City reportedly have decided to fight to death.
Sulu-based university professor Octavio Dinampo said that Malik had sent text messages to other MNLF leaders saying he and his men would no longer withdraw and would “make Zamboanga their graveyard,” as the “losses to fellow Muslims and everyone else” were their responsibility and they should “answer for all of it with their lives.”
Dinampo said an MNLF friend passed the message to him around 3 pm on Friday.
In that message, Malik said he would surrender only if Misuari told him to do so, Dinampo said.
Dinampo said Malik, an Amir (religious leader), claimed to have performed a ritual among his remaining fighters.
“They prefer to die as martyrs in a place where they are now stuck,” Dinampo told the Inquirer by phone. He did not say where that place was.
Meanwhile, a total of 118,819 displaced people sheltered in 57 evacuation centres in Zamboanga City and other safe places are facing a humanitarian crisis.
The government has urged Filipinos to send more aid for them after admitting their plight as “humanitarian crisis.”
Social Welfare Secretary Dinky Soliman told AFP that those displaced were staying in 57 evacuation centres, including the city’s main sports complex, where more than 70,000 people jostled for space and erected tents and shelters fashioned from scavenged materials.
“We are trying to organise them by providing them better materials,” she said, but appealed to the public to send in more aid in the form of clothes, food, education materials and toys for the many children among the displaced.
“The tents are very fragile. If it starts raining hard, there will be a massive problem for children, women, the elderly, the babies and their lactating mothers,” she said.
The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs has said in a report that there was an insufficient supply of tents, cooking utensils and health and sanitation facilities.
It added that children were traumatized while immunizations for common diseases were being undertaken to prevent an outbreak.
The United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) has provided hygiene and water kits to protect the children from diseases and tents that served as temporary learning spaces.
But Unicef said reports indicated that more needed to be done to ensure the well being of children and action taken to prevent spread of diseases.
Limited time offer:
Just RM5 per month.
