Five Dawlah Islamiya Remnants Killed in Cotabato Arrest Operation

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — Combined policemen and soldiers shot dead five remnants of the Dawlah Islamiya for resisting arrest in a law-enforcement operation on Thursday, August 6, in Pikit town in Cotabato province that turned haywire. Lt. Gen. Jose Vladimir Cagara, acting commander of the Western Mindanao Command, and regional police officials in the Bangsamoro region and in Region 12 separately told reporters on Friday that policemen and soldiers were out to check on reporters by Moro villagers about the presence in Barangay Inug-ug in Pikit of the five remnants of the now defunct Dawlah Islamiya, but were forced to neutralize them instead for provoking a gunfight. The slain terrorists, Marhum Sendig Esmael, Halim Sansawi Usman, Ali Usman Manduh, Rasul Bundas Tito and Bebeh Ayunan Camsa, were all wanted for multiple murder, multiple frustrated murder, destructive arson, armed robbery and large-scale trafficking of narcotics cases pending in different courts in Cotabato City and in Central Mindanao’s Cotabato, Sultan Kudarat and Maguindanao del Sur provinces. They are also wanted for their involvement in the March 28 ambush of a police patrol team in Shariff Aguak, Maguindanao del Sur in the Bangsamoro region that left five policemen dead and three others wounded. More than 30 followers of Esmael and Usman, six of them, Alazar Mondih Habib, Alimudin Ganoy Usop, Mindong Janas Odin, Amelil Unas Bentol, Ahmed Sangkaya Guimad and Mantato Usop Musalip, are experts in the fabrication of large improvised explosive devices, had surrendered in batches to different units of the 6th Infantry Division in recent months. All of them had been reintegrated into the local communities via the joint regional reconciliation program for violent religious extremist of the 6th ID, the regional government of the Bangsamoro region and line agencies in Region 12. Local executives in Cotabato province and their constituent-Moro datus supporting the joint anti-terror operations of the 6th ID and the police told reporters that policemen from units of the Maguindanao del Sur Provincial Police Office, led by their director, Col. Michael John Mangahis, and soldiers from the Army’s 40th Infantry Battalion and the 601st Infantry Brigade were about to surround the location of the five terrorists to serve them warrants for their arrest but the operation turned awry when they opened fire. Esmael, Usman, Manduh, Tito and Camsa all died instantly from multiple bullet wounds sustained in the gunfight. Mangahis and Brig. Gen. Ricky Bunayog, acting commander of the 6th Infantry Division, had separately told reporters that policemen and soldiers found beside the cadaver of one of the five terrorists the government-issued combat rifle of Patrolman Apollo Pagurayan, who was killed, along with Patrolman Joerel Basilan Bullos, in an ambush by Dawlah Islamiya terrorists last July 7 in Barangay Tinumigues in Lambayong town in Sultan Kudarat. The ambush fatalities Pagurayan and Bullos, who both belonged to the 1202nd Company of the Regional Mobile Force Battalion 12 under the Police Regional Office 12, were riding a motorcycle together, on their way to their company command post from a road security duty, when they were attacked by Dawlah Islamiya terrorists positioned along a stretch of a highway in Barangay Tinumigues, killing them both immediately. Their assailants took with them the service rifles of the two dead policemen as they escaped.