Marawi urban warfare horror
Philippine military caught unprepared by militants’ brutality
Manila: Inside the “Heroes’ Ward” at a hospital in the Philippine capital, wounded soldiers read the Bible and recount horror stories of an unprecedented urban war against fighters linked to the Islamic State group.
A month of combat in the southern city of Marawi has claimed the lives of 62 troops and injured hundreds of others, while raising fears the Philippines has suddenly become a favourite new battleground for IS.
At the crowded Manila hospital ward, soldiers give harrowing examples of how the Philippine military – with little experience in urban warfare – was caught unprepared for its enemy’s tactics and brutality in housetohouse combat.
Marine Sergeant Sandy Benitez said he survived a battle that cost 13 other troops their lives by crawling for nearly five hours along a short stretch of street while trading fire with snipers, after a rocketpropelled grenade pierced his left foot.
“That was the worst firefight I’ve ever been in,” Benitez, a 13year veteran who had previously battled militants on remote and mountainous southern islands, said.
“Some of my wounded colleagues, they were losing hope and getting rattled. Some were crying.”
Benitez, 34, said he was mostly calm throughout the ordeal, except for when he watched a rocketpropelled grenade kill one of his friends who had enlisted with him.
“When you see your classmate die, sir, you can’t help but shed a tear,” he said.
Benitez said his unit had been deployed in the evening to try and capture one of the militants’ strongholds, supposedly with the advantage of night vision goggles.
“But they threw gasoline at us, molotov bombs. They created fires, so they had visual on us as well,” he added.
The Philippine military has decades of experience battling militants and communist rebels, with those conflicts claiming tens of thousands of lives.
But those wars have been largely waged in rural and mountainous settings.
The nation’s military chiefs and frontline troops such as Benitez say they have relatively little experience in the type of fighting being waged in Marawi, a city of 200,000 residents.
It began when hundreds of militants rampaged through Marawi, the most important Islamic city in the mainly Catholic Philippines, on May 23, taking civilians hostage.
They have since defied a relentless, USbacked bombing campaign that has seen entire districts destroyed, with their snipers based in homes and mosques continuing to pick off ground forces, and civilians being used as human shields.
“If the fight was held in a mountain without its share of civilians roaming around the battleground it would have been very simple,” national military spokesman Restituto Padilla told reporters last week.
A military commander overseeing the battle in Marawi who has fought many wars in the southern region of Mindanao, but who asked not to be named to speak candidly, said most troops were learning on the job.
“We have a shallow pool of highly trained people for this specific situation,” the commander said, as he described soldiers spending two days trying unsuccessfully to clear a single house and threats such as tripwire bombs.