Baby

FAREWELL KISS. Navy Ensign Jeffrey Legaspi, 27, kisses his 4-month old son Genesis Matthew before deployment to Basilan with the 1st Naval Mobile Construction Battalion and the 355th Aviation Engineering Wing of the Philippine Air Force as part of the government’s humanitarian offensive. INQUIRER/REM ZAMORA

NPA Camp seized

NPA CAMP SEIZED IN QUEZON. Philippine Army Scout Rangers burn a communist flag that they found after seizing a large NPA camp in Sitio Madarik, Umiray village, General Nakar town, Quezon province. The camp was said to have accommodated hundreds of rebels and had 10 huts, six guard posts, a firing range and a basketball court. PHILIPPINE DAILY INQUIRER/RAFFY LERMA

Marine commander in Basilan sacked

By Christine Avendaño, Juliet Labog-Javellana, Julie Alipala
Inquirer, Mindanao Bureau
Last updated 01:31am (Mla time) 08/23/2007

MANILA, Philippines — Gen. Hermogenes Esperon Jr., Armed Forces of the Philippines chief of staff, Wednesday sacked the Marine brigade commander in Basilan province, saying he wanted an officer to be with his troops in the raging battle against Moro rebels.

 

Faced with mounting casualties on the battlefront, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was to fly Thursday to Zamboanga City for a command conference.

 

“The President would like to assess the situation right there on the ground,” Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita said at a news conference in Malacañang.

 

Esperon said the relief of Col. Ramiro Alivio, a member of the Philippine Military Academy Class 1979, was a decision of the Board of Generals, which he heads.

 

“We have to have a brigade commander that will be with the troops … during operations,” Esperon told reporters. He said Alivio had been directing operations from his headquarters in Isabela, Basilan, as his men suffered severe casualties on the battlefront.

 

“A brigade commander will be more effective if he would be near the troops during operations and so we have put in there a commander who I think would … take all the opportunity to be with his troops,” he said.

 

Col. Rustico Guerrero, head of the Marine Corps Training Center in Fort Bonifacio, will replace Alivio, Esperon announced.

 

Alivio confirmed to the Philippine Daily Inquirer his relief. “I welcome any move from the higher headquarters,” said Alivio, who declined to give further details. “I have no regrets. My conscience is clear.”

 

Under investigation

 

A ranking Marine officer who did not wish to be identified said Alivio’s relief was related to the July 10 incident in Al-Barka town in Basilan where 14 soldiers were killed. Ten of them were subsequently beheaded by members of the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).

 

Alivio is undergoing investigation for the incident, the officer said.

 

Esperon also disclosed that Alivio had supervised the movement of his troops that assaulted an Abu Sayyaf camp in Ungkaya Pukan town, also in Basilan, on Aug. 18 from his headquarters in Isabela City. That raid cost the lives of 15 Marine soldiers.

 

The military has lost 29 Marine soldiers in Basilan since July 10 and 27 Army soldiers in the campaign in Sulu province.

 

“I don’t contest the assessment of Colonel Alivio that he has to remain in his headquarters while the operations are going on, but I believe a brigade commander will be more effective if he will be near the troops during operations,” Esperon said.

 

It is “automatic” that when a brigade commander has two battalions on pursuit operations, “you should be in that operations, not in the headquarters,” he said.

 

Told that Alivio was not in charge of the Aug. 18 assault of the Abu Sayyaf camp in Ungkaya Pukan, Esperon acknowledged that Brig. Gen. Juancho Sabban, head of Task Force Thunder, was “in charge of the whole operations” on that fateful day.

 

“But I wish Colonel Alivio would have been more forward. I know that he could control the troops from where he was, but I would have preferred that he be nearer the troops,” he added.

 

Not end of career

 

Esperon stressed that Alivio would be assigned to another position where his intelligence background would serve the organization best. “If you ask me if this is the end of his career, no, he is a very good officer and therefore we will put him in another position,” he said.

 

Ermita said that from Zamboanga, Ms Arroyo will proceed to Bohol province on Friday to preside over a peace and security summit for Central Visayas.

 

He said that the President had ordered Cabinet secretaries to go to Mindanao to implement the “humanitarian offensive” to help the people displaced by the conflict.

 

The Marine officer, who declined to be identified, told the Inquirer in Zamboanga that personnel at the 15th Strike Wing, which provides assault aircraft to the 3rd Tactical Operations Wing (TOW) at Edwin Andrews Air Base, were also under investigation for the ditch landing of an MG520 attack helicopter on Aug. 18 on Umaloy Island in Basilan.

 

Col. Reynaldo Ramirez, commander of the 3rd TOW, said a technical problem was the main cause of the crash landing resulting in the death of 2nd Lt. Claudio Unaundo and the wounding of 1st Lt. Hermilino Calibiran.

 

Other investigations

 

Still to be investigated are the Aug. 8 and 9 clashes in Parang and Maimbung towns.

 

The officer said Sabban might be held “liable for doctrinal mis-utilization of the Force Reconnaissance Company (FRCoy).

 

“They are not meant to engage the enemy but to find them (ASG) for the infantry men, artillery or aircraft to attack,” said the officer.

 

The FRCoy is the unit of Marine soldiers that fought the Abu Sayyaf bandits in Unkaya Pukan on Saturday, leaving five junior officers and 10 enlisted personnel dead.

 

The FRCoy members were completing their training on close-quarter combat and were sent to the Abu Sayyaf lair in Unkaya Pukan as a test mission.

 

“The most that they (FRCoy) can do is to raid followed by a swift withdrawal, never pitch battle with the enemy,” the Marine officer added.

 

‘Doomed to debacle’

 

Citing the manner of how the FRCoy troops were utilized, the Marine officer said “they were doomed to debacle based on the intent of the operation.”

 

He said Sabban committed the same error during the Sept. 4, 2006, operation in Barangay Tugas in Patikul, Sulu, when the 1st FRCoy Class 12 under Lt. Romulo Dimayuga was sent on a test mission.

 

Dimayuga led a platoon of 27 Marine soldiers and encountered more than 200 bandits that led to the death of six soldiers and the wounding of 19 others, including Dimayuga.

More residents flee fighting in southern Philippines

Agence France-Presse
Last updated 11:07am (Mla time) 08/23/2007

MANILA, Philippines — Nearly 24,000 people have fled their homes in the southern Philippines to escape fighting between the armed forces and Islamic militants, relief officials said Thursday.

 

With President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo due to fly to the troubled southern region later in the day to meet with commanders, the civil defense office said that 40 hamlets had been evacuated on mainly Muslim Jolo and Basilan islands.

 

It said 14 schools had also been shut since July 10, when militants killed 14 marines — and beheaded 10 of them — in an ambush.

 

Thousands of troops have been deployed to the islands, sparking further clashes that have led to some of the heaviest military casualties in recent years, with dozens of soldiers and militants killed.

 

“The situation in Basilan remains critical due to ongoing [military] operations against Abu Sayyaf Group targets,” the government relief agency said.

 

Relief officials are expecting “massive evacuation” on top of nearly 12,000 people who have sought refuge at government-run centers, it said. A similar number have left their homes in Jolo.

 

Families of displaced persons at those camps are getting basic rations of rice, sugar, coffee, noodles and sardines, it said.

 

Other organizations including the UN World Food Program, are taking part in the relief work.

 

The Abu Sayyaf has carried out the worst terror attacks in Philippine history, including mass kidnappings and bombings.

 

Both the United States and Philippine governments have linked the Abu Sayyaf movement to the Al-Qaeda network of Osama bin Laden.

 

The United States, which has placed the Abu Sayyaf on its list of foreign terrorist organizations, has been providing special forces personnel in Jolo to provide intelligence and training to local forces.

Arroyo to visit troops fighting Abu Sayyaf in Basilan

By Joel Guinto
INQUIRER.net
Last updated 11:24am (Mla time) 08/23/2007

ISABELA CITY, Basilan — (UPDATE) President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is expected to arrive here Thursday to give a pep talk to soldiers who have been fighting the Abu Sayyaf since last month.

 

The fierce clashes have left 57 troopers and 81 al Qaeda-linked bandits dead.

 

Before her Basilan trip, Arroyo will join soldiers in a “boodle fight” at noon at the First Marine Brigade headquarters after presiding over a joint military and police command conference at the Western Mindanao Command headquarters in Zamboanga City.

 

“She will talk to the men. She will talk to the officers,” Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) Chief of Staff General Hermogenes Esperon Jr. told reporters.

 

In brief remarks during the command conference at Westmincom headquarters, Esperon thanked the President for supporting the offensives against the Abu Sayyaf in Sulu and Basilan.

 

“I speak for everyone of here when I say that your unwavering support comes as a great motivator,” he said.

 

“We will repay it with our fortified resolve to carry out our duties,” he added.

 

The military chief said in closing: “Each one of us has a role to play in this current situation. We must get our acts together.”

 

“We must act with good judgment, with courage, and determination,” he added.

 

Last Saturday, 15 Marines and over 40 Abu Sayyaf members were killed after they clashed with the Abu Sayyaf in Ungkaya Pukan town here. An Air Force pilot was killed when his aircraft crashed after giving air support to troops in the encounter.

 

A month earlier, 14 Marines were killed, 10 of whom were beheaded, when Marines here were attacked by combined Moro Islamic Liberation
Front (MILF) rebels and Abu Sayyaf bandits in Al-Barkah town.

 

In the neighboring island province of Sulu, four engagements between government forces and the Abu Sayyaf and rogue Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) rebels left 27 Army soldiers and over 40 rebels killed.

Evacuees

CASUALTIES OF WAR. Evacuees rest by the side of the road as they flee their homes to avoid being caught in hostilities as government troops move in closer to what they believe to be an Abu Sayyaf camp in Tipo-Tipo, Basilan. INQUIRER/EDWIN BACASMAS

Scanning the area

THE SENTINEL. A Marine scans the surrounding terrain as he stands guard on the perimeter of his unit’s bivouac in Tipo-Tipo, Basilan. INQUIRER/EDWIN BACASMAS

GRP-MILF informal talks in Malaysia postponed

But not due to offensives in south By Veronica Uy
INQUIRER.net, Agence France-Presse
Last updated 06:37pm (Mla time) 08/21/2007

MANILA, Philippines — Informal peace talks between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in the Malaysian capital of Kuala Lumpur have been postponed, the government’s chief negotiator, retired general Rodolfo Garcia, said Tuesday.

But Garcia said the postponement had nothing to do with the ongoing military offensives in Basilan and Sulu but was “unilateral on my part because I wanted to clarify some points in the government package offer to the other side. Right now, we’re in the middle of that process within the Cabinet security cluster. That’s all there is to it,” he told INQUIRER.net in a phone interview.

 

Government negotiators were supposed to fly to Kuala Lumpur Monday for the talks, which were scheduled for Wednesday.

“I want to go to the meeting better prepared…If the resetting is for time spent to clarify and refine the government position, then it would be well worth the wait,” he added, refusing to identify what specific aspect he wanted discussed with government policy makers.

Garcia said he has formally informed both the MILF and Malaysia, which is brokering the talks, of the postponement.

Asked about their reaction to the postponement, Garcia said: “Everyone is excited over this, not just the MILF, but people who have deep interest in the developments in Mindanao, including members of the international community involved in the regional efforts…So there must be a little bit of disappointment, especially if all their bags are packed. There’s an element of disappointment but I think they understand.”

 

MILF negotiator Mohagher Iqbal said Tuesday that his group was ready for the talks but had been told by the Malaysian facilitator that Garcia had “not been given clear guidelines on how to proceed with the peace process.”

 

“That means we cannot resume the talks because the government is not prepared to concede anything,” Iqbal told ABS-CBN television in an interview, claiming that Manila had put off the talks once before in May.

 

The 12,000-strong MILF late last year said the talks were on the brink of collapse over its demands for economic control of ancestral lands on the southern island of Mindanao.

Garcia said he does not know when the talks would resume, but said that if it were up to him, he would want the negotiations finished before the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

“But you know, in this case, it takes three to tango,” he said, referring to the government, the MILF, and Malaysia.

The former Armed Forces vice chief of staff said he is optimistic about the overall development of the peace talks. “This is the 14th exploratory talks. Double seven, they say, is lucky,” he said.

Garcia said the mechanisms for keeping the MILF out of harm’s way in the military’s current offensive against the Abu Sayyaf are in place.

But the talks were endangered July 10 when MILF forces in Basilan ambushed and battled Marines, killing 14 soldiers. Ten of the slain troops were beheaded but the MILF denied responsibility for this.

 

Hostilities were prevented after a joint government-MILF probe that identified Abu Sayyaf members as responsible for mutilating the dead soldiers.

 

A three-year ceasefire between the two parties has largely held although skirmishes have occasionally broken out.

 

The military launched an offensive on August 13 against the Abu Sayyaf in Sulu and Basilan, but President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo said troops should respect the “ceasefire guidelines” with the MILF.

 

Military officials say they are coordinating with the MILF to ensure their forces do not get caught up in the operation but sources have charged that MILF fighters are helping the Abu Sayyaf.

Moro rebels stand aside in Sulu to allow gov’t offensive

Moro rebels stand aside in Sulu to allow gov’t offensive
By Joel Guinto
INQUIRER.net
Last updated 06:17pm (Mla time) 08/21/2007

MANILA, Philippines — The path is now clear for government troops waiting to strike the Abu Sayyaf in Sulu after Moro National Liberation Front forces on the island province confined themselves to two predefined areas away from the military offensive.

 

Army chief Lieutenant General Romeo Tolentino, who has been tasked to lead the Sulu offensive, said having the MNLF confined to the two areas, which he refused to identify so as not to jeopardize operations, “simplified the equation.”

 

“When our troops go out and they encounter anyone carrying firearms [outside the MNLF areas], those are considered enemies,” said Tolentino, who President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has tasked with “normalizing” the Sulu security situation.

 

“We are always striking anytime we want,” he added.

 

Asked what progress he made in Sulu ahead of his Friday retirement, Tolentino said: “The operation is now simplified. You can see the enemy.”

 

He also said a gun ban in Sulu was holding.

 

Arroyo sent Tolentino to Sulu after 27 Army soldiers and an estimated 41 Abu Sayyaf fighters were killed in four engagements in Indanan, Parang, and Maimbung towns from August 7 to 9.

 

Tolentino said eyewitness accounts from soldiers in the July 9 Maimbung firefight confirmed that Abu Sayyaf commander Gumbahali Jumdail alias Abu Pula and Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) operative Dulmatin, a suspect in the 2002 Bali bombings, were wounded.

 

“The question is how grave are the wounds? My men saw them,” he said.

 

The Sulu casualties came almost a month after 14 Marines were killed, 10 of them also beheaded, in an encounter with the Abu Sayyaf and Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) rebels in Ginanta village, Al-Barkah town, Basilan province.

 

Last Saturday, 15 Marines and a helicopter pilot and an estimated 42 Abu Sayyaf were killed following a gun battle with the Abu Sayyaf and the MILF in Ungkaya Pukan town.

 

Over a month of fighting has so far left 57 soldiers and an estimated 83 bandits killed.

Military: No letup in war vs terror

Bodies of 13 Marines flown to Manila

By Julie Alipala, Christine Avendaño
Inquirer, Mindanao Bureau
Last updated 01:36am (Mla time) 08/21/2007

MANILA, Philippines — The military Monday spurned Church calls for an end to its bloody offensive against the Abu Sayyaf, even as comrades of 15 Marines killed in clashes with the bandit group last weekend revealed that they had fought with Moro gunmen as young as 15 years old.

 

Amid outrage in the government over the recent series of military setbacks in Mindanao, hundreds of mourners buried at noon a 22-year-old Army lieutenant slain in a separate gun battle with the bandit group in Sulu province 10 days ago.

 

Second Lt. Charlie Anthony Camelon was laid to rest in his hometown of Mauban, Quezon, to the sobbing of grieving relatives, the roll of drums and a bugler’s playing of “taps.”

 

“The operations will continue unabated, unceasing,” Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro told reporters.

 

“We have to apply the law. The instruction of the President is to continue the preparation for the total security of Mindanao.”

 

Teodoro spoke as a C-130 transport plane carrying the bodies of 13 of the 15 soldiers killed in clashes with the Abu Sayyaf last weekend arrived at Villamor Air Base in Pasay City Monday night.

 

“I understand the position of the bishops but we must also understand that we are fighting terrorists here,” Armed Forces Chief of Staff Gen. Hermogenes Esperon said. “There’s no way but to continue the operations against the Abu Sayyaf.”

 

“We will explain our position to the bishops,” Esperon added.

 

Teodoro and Esperon made the statements after Basilan’s Roman Catholic Bishop Martin Jumoad and a nationwide association of priests and nuns appealed to President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo for an end to the bloodbath. The bishop said the death of the young soldiers — ranging in age from 22 to 24 — was a waste of lives.

 

In Zamboanga City, 2nd Lt. Jordan Argete, who was with the Marines killed in Saturday’s Basilan battle, admitted to reporters that the Abu Sayyaf had the edge of fighting from high ground, were “fully armed with heavy type of weapons and they were all young, as young as 15 years old.”

 

Argete and fellow Marine officers 1st Lt. Rowan Rimas and 2nd Lt. Paolo Jose Jandusay denied they were caught “like sitting ducks” during the Basilan clash, as a town mayor had recounted on tape to the Philippine Daily Inquirer, parent company of INQUIRER.net.

 

Rimas admitted that he and his men were in a “dehado (disadvantaged) situation” when they encountered the bandit group linked to Osama bin Laden’s global terror network.

 

Familiar with terrain

 

Jandusay said: “The enemy had memorized the terrain, it was their area.”

 

Western Mindanao Command chief Lt. Gen. Eugenio Cedo lashed out at the Inquirer for reporting the lapses in Saturday’s clash in Unkaya Pukan town in Basilan.

 

Instead of explaining the factors behind the biggest number of casualties under his watch — a total of seven officers and 50 enlisted personnel killed a little over a month — Cedo ignored questions from reporters and called the Inquirer report incorrect.

 

Cedo left immediately without taking his angry eyes off the Inquirer correspondent as the other reporters fell quiet at the general’s outburst.

 

Recorded on tape

 

The Inquirer story was based on an interview with Unkaya Pukan Mayor Joel Maturan, who said on tape that the soldiers were “pinagbabaril na parang ibon (shot at like birds)” by the Abu Sayyaf.

 

Speaking in the company of military officers at Edwin Andrews Air Base, Maturan Monday disowned his taped remarks.

 

He said what he told the Inquirer was that members of the Abu Sayyaf Group were positioned on higher ground and enjoyed the cover of heavy foliage and boulders, unlike the Marines who were positioned below.

 

“What I said was that the Abu Sayyaf were just meters away … Because of their bravery, many Marines died,” Maturan said in Filipino, retracting his earlier statements.

 

Theories not enough

 

The three Marine officers agreed that mastery of the terrain favored the bandit group.

 

Jandusay said that “many of my classmates were so young, fresh graduates from the basic school for Marines.”

 

He said he and his fellow officers were new graduates from the Philippine Military Academy and lacked experience. He said they had learned theories on fighting “but you cannot obtain experience from training.”

 

“We are complete with theories but we still need maturity when it comes to fighting (kailangan namin ng kaunting gulang pagdating sa laban),” he said.

 

Heads must roll

 

In Manila, opposition Sen. Francis Escudero called on Ms Arroyo to fire incompetent and disloyal officers to ensure “tangible results” from the continued deployment of warm bodies to Mindanao.

 

“They should sack incompetent and disloyal officers, should there be any. Another is to investigate thoroughly all government officials, elected or appointed, for complicity with the enemy, however close they may be to the administration party.”

 

Sen. Rodolfo Biazon blamed defective weapons and poor intelligence for the military debacles, while jailed Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV claimed some officials whom he did not identify had connived with the enemy, dooming the Marines in Basilan.

 

‘Human offensive’

 

Ms Arroyo Monday ordered the Department of Energy and the Department of Education (DepEd) to conduct a “humanitarian offensive” in Basilan and Sulu to assist civilians affected by the ongoing military offensive.

 

According to Ms Arroyo, the “humanitarian offensive” includes the putting up of solar-powered science laboratories “in the hinterlands of Basilan and Sulu” to enable students to continue their studies despite the fighting.

 

“We’d like to do a humanitarian offensive in Basilan and Sulu and the assignment of the Department of Energy, together with the DepEd, would be to put up solar-powered science laboratories for students in the hinterlands of Sulu and Basilan,” she said.

 

On Esperon’s orders, the 13 slain soldiers brought to Manila Monday night were given posthumous one-rank promotions. Each of their aluminum caskets was draped in the Philippine flag. A flag also covered the casket of an Air Force pilot killed during the incident. He was also promoted.

 

Top military and defense officials honored each soldier with a salute as their remains were unloaded from the plane.

 

Relatives sobbed as a priest blessed each casket. Other grieving relatives, kept in the terminal, peeked through glass windows.

 

Alex Vergara, father of the slain Marine Danilo, did not want to believe his son was dead until he saw the casket for himself.

 

“When I saw him, I had no choice but to accept it, even if it’s very painful,” he said. With reports from Michael Lim Ubac and Tarra Quismundo