MAGUINDANAO –A total of 44 bodies of slain police commandos are now in the custody of the military in southern Philippines following deadly clashes with former Moro Islamic Liberation Front rebels in Maguindanao, one of five provinces under the troubled Muslim autonomous region in Mindanao.
But the MILF reported that 64 members of the Special Action Force had been killed in the weekend battle after commandos raided the remote village of Tukanalipao in Mamasapano town which is a known stronghold of the former rebel group.
Commandos were allegedly pursuing Filipino terrorist Basit Usman and Jemaah Islamiya bomber Zulkifli bin Hir in the village after intelligence report claimed the duo was hiding in the area which is also the MILF’s 105th Base Command.
“A total of 44 bodies of slain SAF members are now at the 6th Infantry Division,” Capt. Jo-ann Petinglay, an army spokeswoman, told the regional newspaper Mindanao Examiner.
The police maintained that only 44 SAF commandos had been killed in the fighting that the government insisted was a ‘mis-encounter’ between the two groups. Nearly a battalion of police commandos were involved in the pre-dawn operation, but the military and the MILF both said that SAF did not inform or coordinate with them.
Mamasapano Mayor Tahirodin Benzar Ampatuan also said that he was not informed by the police about the SAF operation and only learned about it after commandos attacked the MILF base.
He said police did not inform and coordinate with him when they launched the operation in Tukanalipao. “We are not even aware of the police operation and police did not coordinate with us,” he said in a separate interview.
Ampatuan said his group recovered a total of 35 bodies and handed the cadavers to the police. “We have recovered 35 bodies and handed all these to the police authorities,” he said.
He said there were no reports that Usman or Zulkifli were hiding in his town. “We have no reports that Usman or Zulkifli are hiding in our town. What the police raided was the 105th Base Command of the MILF,” Ampatuan said.
The SAF commander, Director Getulio Napeñas, has been relieved from his post as the government starts an investigation into the clashes. (Mindanao Examiner)
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