A city ruined by urban war
Battle with IS results in devastation not unlike that seen in Aleppo and Mosul
The battle for Marawi lasted more than four times longer than the US-led campaign to liberate Manila from Japanese World War II occupation forces.
MARAWI: At first glance, the endless rows of devastated buildings could be the aftermath of a great earthquake. But the punctured, bullet-riddled walls tell the true story of the Philippines’ longest urban war.
“No one wanted this to happen,” President Rodrigo Duterte said on Tuesday as he declared Marawi city “liberated from the terrorists’ influence” after a nearly five-month battle with gunmen loyal to the Islamic State (IS) group.
Days earlier, troops had tracked down and killed the Islamic State “emir” for South-East Asia – Isnilon Hapilon, leader of the militants.
The battle for the southern city, the Islamic capital of the mainly Catholic Philippines, lasted more than four times longer than the US-led campaign to liberate Manila from Japanese World War II occupation forces.
In the process, the military literally destroyed Marawi to save it from gunmen it says are intent on carving out territory for a South-East Asian caliphate.
Metal shutters and walls are pockmarked with bullet holes, pavements piled high with twisted metal and cannibalised cars, and streets strewn with machine-gun slugs.
The scenes evoked pictures of destruction in war-torn Middle Eastern cities like Aleppo and Mosul.
Defence Secretary Delfin Lorenzana estimates the government will need US$1.1bil (RM4.56bil) to rebuild the city.
On the ground floor of some buildings, soldiers peered warily at the street through holes just big enough for men to crawl through.
These gaps are evidence that the militants who seized the city on May 23 – estimated by military officials to have numbered one thousand – brought in a new style of urban warfare that initially flummoxed Filipino troops.
The militants blasted rat holes through walls to turn hundreds of densely built buildings in the city centre into a maze of improvised tunnels to evade relentless airstrikes as well as US and Australian spy planes and drones.
They seized hostages, using some as human shields and others as cooks, medics, or grave diggers for dead gunmen.
They also forced captives to loot houses for cash and weapons and even to fight alongside them, the military said.
“These terrorists are using combat tactics that we’ve seen in the Middle East,” US Pacific Command chief Admiral Harry Harris told a security forum in Singapore on Tuesday.
It also marked the first time that IS-inspired forces had banded together to fight on such a scale in the region, he added.
Of the more than 1,000 dead, the Philippine military and police lost 164 men, with more than a thousand soldiers wounded in houseto-house combat.
Most were hit by improvised explosive devices, snipers and firebombs, as well as shoulder-fired rockets used against armoured vehicles.
Forty-seven civilians were killed, while nearly 400,000 others fled their homes, according to official tallies.
Following his speech in Marawi, Duterte apologised to the region’s displaced residents.
“We did not wish this on you ... but the circumstances really compelled us to act,” he said in the eastern city of Pili.
The troops gradually adapted to the new enemy’s tactics while acquiring better-suited equipment, including sniper rifles and armoured vehicles, Philippine military chief General Eduardo Ano told Radyo Singko radio station in Manila on Wednesday.
Some 882 militants were killed, the military said. Authorities have declined to give a timetable for the return of the displaced residents.
Apart from the job of restoring electricity and tap water, there are concerns about potential fresh infiltration of militants, said Zia Alonto Adiong, a spokesman for the Marawi local government.
“We don’t want another incident that would force us to go on evacuation mode again,” he told reporters.