In ruined city, Philippines’ battle against Islamic State rages on
MARAWI, Philippines — The houses still standing after more than three months of fierce urban combat in Marawi are barely holding on — pocked with bullet holes on the outside and blackened by fire from within.
“I really can’t say when we will be able to finish this,” said Brig. Gen. Melquiades Ordiales, with the Philippine marines. A cackle of small-arms fire and the thuds of mortar shell explosions could be heard in the distance as soldiers targeted another pocket of militant fighters.
Rubble and debris had been swept from the street around him, making room for a large group of journalists, including three from The New York Times, who were allowed to visit a newly recaptured part of the city this week.
With the battle now past the 100-day mark, it was the first time in months that the military had allowed the press in. And though the tour was tightly choreographed, there was no hiding either the profound destruction from airstrikes and artillery barrages, or the fact that the fighting remains intense. Just Thursday, three soldiers were reported killed, and 52 more were injured.
Marawi and the surrounding area, on the southern island of Mindanao, was once home to 200,000 people, the biggest Muslim-majority city in the Philippines. It is now a mostly emptiedout field of wreckage, contested by a dwindling group of Islamist militants who claim loyalty to the Islamic State group, and by the government of President Rodrigo Duterte, who has vowed to root them out no matter the cost.
That cost has been grim, particularly for the civilians who had already felt like a mistreated minority and have now been displaced by the battle. Their frustration is rising.
According to the Red Cross, 300,000 people from the city and surrounding area have fled the fight, many taking up residence in camps just 6 miles away. Cramped inside hot tents with donated bedsheets to separate their rooms, most people here desperately want to return home but are coming to grips with the fact that they are stuck.
“They told us to pack for only three days,” said Esnimeh Dago, 22. She was a makeup artist in Marawi and fled with her mother, grandmother and 1-year-old son on the first day of the militants’ assault.
“The government is giving us food and some support, but we want to go back to our jobs,” she said. “Now it looks like there is nothing to go back to.”