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Decades of secessionist violence in the south, homeland of
minority Muslims in the largely Roman Catholic nation,
considerably eased in 2014 after the largest armed group, the
Moro Islamic Liberation Front, which had thousands of armed
guerrillas, signed a Muslim autonomy deal with the government.
A number of smaller armed groups which refused to get involved
in the peace talks, however, continued to wage sporadic
guerrilla attacks for a separate Muslim state.
The latest clash started when suspected members of the Muslim
separatist group called Dawlah Islamiya-Maute opened fire on
police officers and army troops trying to serve warrants for the
arrest of their commander for murder and other alleged crimes in
a village in Lanao del Sur province, police Maj. Gen. Robert
Alexander Morico said.
Amerol Mangoranca and his fighters, who had aligned themselves
with the Islamic State group in the past, had been blamed by the
military for recent guerrilla attacks, including an ambush that
killed four soldiers in nearby Lanao del Norte province in
January, military officials said.
Mangoranca and nine other suspected militants, including four
women, were killed in the hourlong gunbattle in Marantao
village, Morico and military officials said, adding that there
were no government casualties in the clash.
“Our forces have struck a decisive blow and we will continue
forward until enduring peace is fully secured,” army 1st
Infantry Division commander Maj. Gen. Yegor Rey Barroquillo Jr.
said. “It is justice served for every fallen soldier, every
grieving family and every community that suffered under terror.”
The government forces seized four rifles, a pistol, a grenade
and bomb parts, according to the military and police.
An infant found at the battle scene was given unspecified
medical treatment, the military said in a statement without
elaborating.
The 2014 peace deal considerably eased decades of on-and-off
fighting that left tens of thousands of combatants and civilians
dead, displaced large numbers of rural villagers and stunted
development in a resource-rich region with some of the country’s
poorest areas.
The military is separately fighting a decades-old communist
insurgency, which has also been considerably weakened by battle
setbacks, infighting and surrenders.
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