In city of ruins, battle against Islamic State rages on
>> 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 emptied-out field of wreckage, contested by a dwindling group of Islamist militants who claim loyalty to the Islamic State (IS), 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.
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 10km 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 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.”
This area has been a wellspring for resistance to the government for a long time — by insurgent movements, Islamist groups, criminal gangs, sometimes all three together.
The militants who seized Marawi in May have pledged loyalty to the IS.
At the battle’s start, there were thought to be about 600 fighters, led by the Maute brothers and their gang along with Isnilon Hapilon, the longtime leader of the militant group Abu Sayyaf and now the head of the IS branch in the Philippines.
The attraction of the IS brand is obvious: a boost to recruiting and a fearsome reputation to graft onto their own.
But in recent months, counterterrorism experts have acknowledged that real aid from the IS’s central command — mostly financial, though including a few dozen foreign fighters — has strengthened the local group.
Now, the government contends that only a few dozen militants are alive in the city. But the battle’s end does not seem near, and the fact that the fighters have held on so long is troubling to many.
“I would guess that even the insurgents are surprised at how long this has gone on,” said Zachary Abuza, a professor at the National War College in Washington who specialises in Southeast Asian security issues.
The army says at least 133 troops, 617 militants and 45 civilians have been killed in the hostilities.
At least 1,728 people have been rescued after either being taken hostage or being trapped in the firefight.
The military said last week that it had cleared Marawi’s grand mosque, which the militants had used as a headquarters and where they were initially believed to have taken dozens of hostages.