By Hader Glang
ZAMBOANGA CITY, Philippines
Reports claim that one of Southeast Asia’s most wanted militants was among those killed during Sunday's day-long firefight between elite police forces and factions of the Philippines' one-time largest rebel group.
GMA News Online cited a report from a Special Action Force director Monday as saying that operatives were able to "neutralize" Malaysian bombmaker Zulkifli bin Hir - also known as Marwan - at around 2:30 a.m. (18.30GMT Saturday) during the encounter in Maguindanao in the southern Philippines that left around 50 police commandos dead.
Marwan was considered one of the most wanted leaders of Jemaah Islamiya (JI) - a Southeast Asian militant organization linked to al-Qaeda believed to operate in Southeast Asia.
He was understood to be involved in bombing and terror attacks in Mindanao involving the JI-assisted Abu Sayyaf group. Alongside him in Maguindanao was believed to be foreign-trained bomb maker Basit Usman - a Filipino rebel belonging to the al-Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf who was also believed to have links with JI.
The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation had recently offered $5 million bounty for Marwan's capture and $1 million for Usman's.
Media quoted Philippines Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin as saying Monday: "According to reports they [police] were able to neutralize one of them, Marwan, although the other one [Usman] was able to escape."
In a statement, Governor Mujiv Hataman of the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao - the country’s southernmost major island - said that the incident claimed the lives of 49 police officers and five Moro Islamic Liberation Front fighters,
He called the firefight the “single largest loss of life for the security sector.”
The GMA report quoted sources in the security forces as saying that the police operation was intended to serve an arrest warrant on Marwan, whose presence had been confirmed in the area.
Local Government Secretary Mar Roxas told media Monday that "the misencounter... happened when the SAF [police] team maneuvered inadvertently into an area controlled by the MILF without advance coordination after deciding to withdraw their action to arrest Usman and Marwan."
The GMA reported quoted Mohagher Iqbal - the MILF's chief negotiator in peace talks with the government - as saying that it was "self-defense" on their part.
He said that police forces had fired first in the clash, which also reportedly involved members of MILF splinter group the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters.
A board of Inquiry has been set up by the government to investigate the incident.
In March, the MILF signed up to a peace deal to establish a Bangsamoro entity in Mindanao to replace the current autonomous region and implement the Bangsamoro Basic Law in return for it renouncing violence and decommissioning its arms.
In a statement Monday, Senator Ferdinand Marcos Jr., chairman of the Senate committee on local government, said he was halting discussions on the law until further notice.
Governor Hataman said in his statement that the MILF concurs that the operation launched by the elite police team was legitimate, the incident was a “misencounter” and called on both the government and MILF not to let the killings affect the ongoing peace process.
He cautioned that detractors might use the incident for their own agenda and try to sow discord and derail the process.
“As stakeholders, we must guard the gains,” he said.
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