{"id":39810,"date":"2015-01-26T16:57:26","date_gmt":"2015-01-26T08:57:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/?p=39810"},"modified":"2015-01-26T16:57:26","modified_gmt":"2015-01-26T08:57:26","slug":"at-least-30-cops-died-in-milf-clash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/2015\/01\/26\/at-least-30-cops-died-in-milf-clash\/","title":{"rendered":"At least 30 cops died in MILF clash"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"shutterstock_92369299\"<\/a>
Shutterstock Photo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

MANILA \u2013 At least 30 members of the police died on Sunday in a clash with Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in Maguindanao province, the first recorded violence since both parties signed the peace agreement last year.<\/p>\n

The lead MILF negotiator during peace talks with the government Mohagher Iqbal confirmed the incident, but refused how many fighters were killed.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is the first encounter between the MILF and [government forces] this year. Hopefully, this will be the last,\u201d Iqbal said. \u201cThe clash was triggered by a no-coordination police operation.\u201d<\/p>\n

He also claimed that the police officers attacked the area first.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey also attacked our position, that\u2019s how our troops were dragged into the encounter,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Earlier reports were not clear. According to the officials, the members of Philippine National Police Special Action Force (SAF) intruded into the territory of the MILF\u2019s 105th Base Command, thus the clash started.<\/p>\n

According to Capt. Joanne Petinglay, chief of the Army\u2019s 6th Infantry Division public affairs unit, the military was currently doing their clearing operations in Mamasapno, when the policemen were killed in a clash with fighters and outlaws from the BIFF.<\/p>\n

She said that they cannot determine the number of policemen killed yet.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs of now I cannot give an exact number of fatalities, it was a police operation, there was no coordination with our
\ntroops on the ground,\u201d said Petinglay.<\/p>\n

MILF chief for military affairs Von Al Haq said that at least 30 policemen were killed at around 3 a.m. last Sunday. But another officer claimed that at least 36 killed, disarmed, and mutilated.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are still verifying the casualty figure, what we are doing is we assist the police in extracting the fatalities,\u201d Petinglay said.<\/p>\n

Petinglay recounted that the SAF unit came to Mamasapano for a \u201claw enforcement operation against a most wanted man, a high-value target, a Jemaah Islamiyah member.\u201d<\/p>\n

The SAF team was there to serve a warrant of arrest to Zulkifli bin Hir and Basit Usman. But things turned difficult and ended up with exchange of bullets.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were shocked when the SAF attacked the 105th Base Command of the MILF because there is an ongoing peace talks with the government,\u201d said Abu Misri Mama from BIFF<\/p>\n

He added, \u201cThe firefight has already died down but the SAF and the military are already surrounded by the MILF and the BIFF.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, Petinglay said that the claims of Mama were false saying that the military was not involved in the firefights.<\/p>\n

\u201cPossibly the group that the BIFF clashed with is the SAF,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

MANILA \u2013 At least 30 members of the police died on Sunday in a clash with Moro Islamic Liberation Front …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":27770,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[95],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news-ph","mauthors-lei-fontamillas","mauthors-philippine-canadian-inquirer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39810"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39810\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/canadianinquirer.net\/v1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}