Bloody end to Marawi siege
Residents find homes ransacked after IS group defeated
SMOKE wafted from the smouldering carcasses of buildings and houses, with the dome of a mosque blasted out with holes, as Philippine troops yesterday battled to defeat a final stand by the last dozens of pro-Islamic State militants in a southern city.
The desolate war scene could herald what the government hopes will be the end of a nearly five-month siege in Marawi city.
Filipino troops killed 13 more suspected militants on Wednesday night, including one believed to be a top Malaysian terror suspect although his body hasn’t been recovered yet, military officials said.
“Our troops are continuing their assault,” army Colonel Romeo Brawner said after his news conference in Marawi was disrupted by explosions reverberating from the final area of battle, about 2km away. About 20 to 30 militants continue to fight back, he said.
While troops pressed their assault with artillery and gunfire, officers used loudspeakers to ask the militants, many of them positioned in a bullet-pocked two-storey building, to surrender. The building stands on a pier by the lake near a huge gunfire-scarred welcome sign that says, “I (love) Marawi”.
Sporadic fighting continued even after President Rodrigo Duterte visited the Islamic city on Tuesday and announced its liberation, sparking hopes that hundreds of thousands of residents could begin returning home. This will depend on how quickly the city is declared safe of militants and rebuilt.
Volunteers and displaced residents have begun a government-led clean-up in neighbourhoods that were declared safe. Power has been restored in more than half of the lakeside city, along with water supply, officials said.
On Monday, the defence secretary and military chief of staff announced that two of the last leaders of the siege – Isnilon Hapilon, one of the FBI’s most-wanted terror suspects, and Omarkhayam Maute – were killed in a gunbattle. Their deaths partly convinced the president he could declare Marawi liberated from the gunmen, said Brawner.
Military spokesperson Major-General Restituto Padilla said Malaysian Mahmud bin Ahmad was believed among 13 militants killed. Six soldiers were slightly wounded. Civilian hostages – a mother and her teenage daughter – were also rescued, Padilla said.
Mahmud, who uses the nom de guerre Abu Handzalah, is a close associate of Hapilon. Military officials said he had linked up Hapilon with IS and bankrolled the siege. Padilla said troops discovered that there may be more militant fighters remaining than earlier estimated.
Marawi, a mosque-studded centre of Islam in the predominantly Roman Catholic Philippines, has been devastated in the siege by the militants. Some of the residents who returned to Marawi for the clean-up yesterday became emotional after seeing their devastated city and homes.