At least 14 people were killed in a land dispute involving two Muslim guerrilla commanders and their followers in a southern Philippine town, military and civilian officials said yesterday.
The fighting erupted on Wednesday between two commanders of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in a village in Pagalungan town in Maguindanao del Sur province, but a truce had since been forged.
The fighting was set off by a long-running land dispute between the clans of the two rebel commanders.
Photo: Reuters Archive
The Moro Islamic Liberation Front was the largest Muslim separatist armed group in the southern Philippines, homeland of minority Muslims in the largely Roman Catholic nation until it signed a peace deal with the Philippine government in 2014, when it dropped its separatist goal and agreed to a better-funded Muslim autonomous region called Bangsamoro in the nation’s south.
The six-province Muslim region is now governed by former rebel leaders in a transition arrangement.
However, thousands of guerrillas belonging to the rebel front were still holding on to their firearms while awaiting amnesty and livelihood packages from the government under the peace deal.
Pagalungan Vice Mayor Abdillah Mamasabulod said that a feud over farmland erupted anew into fierce fighting on Wednesday afternoon in the village of Kilangan.
“They have been fighting over ownership of about 290 hectares of agricultural land,” said Mamasabulod, who renewed a call for the clans to settle their dispute peacefully through government and rebel mediators.
Mamasabulod cited witnesses as saying that up to 19 people were killed in the sporadic fighting and scores were wounded before a ceasefire was forged.
Philippine Army Lieutenant Colonel Roden Orbon, spokesman of the 6th Infantry Division, said that at least 14 people were killed in the intermittent clashes in the village, where government forces were deployed to secure civilian villagers.
Troops recovered five rifles at the scene of the fighting.
“The military and police are continuously conducting monitoring in all nearby hospitals and coordinating with the leadership of both warring groups to identify the still unidentified bodies,” Orbon said.
Villagers who fled at the height of the fighting were returning to their communities, he said.
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