Datu Salibo, one of 36 towns in Maguindanao province. It had a population of 15,062 in 2010, according to the Philippine Statistics Authority.
MAGUINDANAO, Philippines – Government forces on Tuesday found shanties in Datu Salibo town where members of the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF) kept materials for making improvised explosive devices (IEDs).
The combined Marine and Army team that discovered the huts traded shots with retreating snipers armed with locally-manufactured .50-cal rifles before they could collect the ordnance cache.
Military officials said ordnance personnel found mortar projectiles, incendiary and blasting chemicals and contraptions of improvised battery-operated IED detonators in the abandoned BIFF lair.
The BIFF is a breakaway group from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, which signed a peace agreement with the government in 2014. The BIFF is considered a bandit group and has been in clashes with the military since early this year.
“We also found cut pieces of construction support bars, fragments of cast iron and nails to be packed with the IEDs they were to assemble to ensure it can really kill, hurt their targets,” said a junior Army officer, who requested anonymity for lack of authority to speak to the media.
Soldiers also recovered addresses of business establishments and sketches of routes around public terminals and markets the BIFF may have intended to bomb.
Army bomb disposal experts also collected some 20 kg of crystalline pellets in small plastic bags, believed to be regulated ammonium nitrate fertilizer. The fertilizer can be used as blasting charges for IEDs when mixed with kerosene and sulfur.
BIFF spokesperson Abu Misry Mama said the group has never stored materials for booby traps and roadside bombs in Datu Salibo.
“We will continue to harass soldiers now positioned in the barangays we once controlled until they leave,” Misry also said in Filipino.
A Marine private, Ronel Undecimo, was killed on Monday night when BIFF bandits attacked an encampment of the 25th Marine Company in Barangay Tee in Datu Salibo. He was the latest fatality in recurring clashes between government forces and the BIFF in Datu Salibo, bringing the number of soldiers killed there since late January to five.
Undecimo’s immediate superior, 2nd Lt. Shajeed Andik, was wounded in the attack.
Capt. Joann Petinglay, spokesperson of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division, said more than 30 other soldiers have been wounded in the spate of encounters in Datu Salibo.
At least 13 of the injured soldiers were victims of roadside bombings while clearing the area for booby traps along farm trails crisscrossing the surroundings of Barangay Tee and nearby agricultural areas.
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