Troops are ready to deal with possible “sympathy attacks" for those siding with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), officials assured the public on Saturday.
In a press conference, Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr. and AFP chief of staff Gen. Alexander Yano said that troops in other parts of the country are on high alert because other groups sympathizing with the MILF might cause trouble.
Teodoro and Yano said the ongoing Armed Forces of the Philippines offensive in Mindanao is "strictly limited to the the forces of Umbra Kato and Abdulrahman Macapaar, alias Commander Bravo, who led attacks on villages in Lanao del Norte, North Cotabato and Sarangani in the past two weeks.
Kato and Bravo, along with more than 80 others, were charged by the police last Friday with the crimes of murder, robbery-in-band and arson in connection with their attacks on several villages in the southern provinces of Lanao del Norte, North Cotabato and Saranggani in the past two weeks.
Teodoro said it's up to the MILF whether or not they will support the forces of Kato and Bravo.
Yano added that anybody who sympathizes with the military's current targets "will be included in that operations, considering on the ground it is difficult to distinguish which group belongs to whatever base command so when we are specifically targeting the base command of Umbra Kato, any group who joins or sympathizes naturally will have to be dealt with accordingly."
Troops in other parts of the country had also been earlier alerted for possible "sympathy strikes" by communist rebels.
Last week, exiled Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) supremo Jose Ma."Joma" Sison proposed an alliance between the New People’s Army (NPA) and the MILF to fight government forces.
In a separate press conference at the MILF's Camp Darapanan in Central Mindanao on Saturday morning, Front chairman Al-Haj Murad also said his forces were ready for any attempt by government forces to enter their territories.
Murad maintained that the MILF leadership was not giving up the two commanders as demanded by some government officials and politicians alarmed by the rebel attacks on civilians.
As "revolutionaries," Murad said the two are outside the coverage of existing Philippine laws.
Teodoro said that may be so but if the MILF harbors criminals, the government has the prerogative to enforce the law.
"... kung sinasabi nila hindi nila isusuko, ibig sabihin kinukunsinti na nila, patuloy ang aming operations laban sa mga commanders na ito at nasasa kanila na 'yun bilang MILF kung susuportahan nila o hindi, pero ang main thing ay hustisya maibigay para sa mga biktima ng mga ito (...it's up to the MILF leadership if they refuse to surrender those wanted for crimes but the main thing is that justice has to be rendered to the victims)," he said.
Murad confirmed that skirmishes between government and MILF forces are ongoing in Maguindanao and Shariff Kabunsuan provinces, and warned that the peace process could collapse if the government forces continue their offensive.
Murad said he could only "hope" that the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain would be signed so that the peace process would push through. He reiterated his earlier stand that there is nothing to renegotiate about the memorandum of agreement, whose signing the Supreme Court stopped last Aug. 4.
It was the aborted signing of the agreement that prompted the forces of Kato and Bravo to attack villages in Central Mindanao.
In the last count of the National Disaster Coordinating Council (NDCC), 44 people were killed as a result of the attacks. Of the number, 33 died in Lanao del Norte, six in North Cotabato, two each in Sarangani and Basilan and one in Shariff Kabunsuan. Fifty-three others were also reported injured.
The MILF rampage sent more than tens of thousands of people fleeing their homes. As of Friday, more than 10, 120 families were still residing in 95 evacuation centers in Mindanao, said the NDCC.
In the fighting in Yano said that four soldiers were killed and 20 wounded in intense fighting between troops from the Philippine Army’s 6th Infantry Division and the MILF’s 105th Base Command under Kato in the past two days in Datu Piang and Mamasapano, Maguindanao.
The military earlier said between 60 to 100 MILF fighters may have been killed in two days of aerial bombings and howitzer fire on their encampments.
Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro Jr., meanwhile, branded the MILF's insistence on signing the memorandum of agreement as "extortion."
"I'm in favor of another agreement another MOA, whatever it takes to stop the conflict, but you know it must not be, it just not have as a tradeoff the criminals going scott free, we cannot have that as a tradeoff," he said.
Source: GMANews.TV
