The battle zone in Marawi keeps getting smaller and smaller.
The battle zone in Marawi City has been narrowed down to just 20 hectares, said Joint Task Force Marawi spokesman Captain Jo-ann Petinglay in a press briefing on Friday, September 8.
"Our soldiers are still trying to clear a portion of about 20-21 hectares land area in the main battle area," she said.
It is about the size of the campus of University of Santo Tomas in Manila, except the battle zone is a commercial area packed with high-rise buildings.
With the AFP drawing the noose tight, the remaining Maute fighters are forced to resort to desperate techniques to continue the battle.
They don’t just go through walls opened up from house to house in the battle of Marawi, but the terrorist Maute fighters even play possum slithering through the drainage system underneath the streets in the fight for survival.
From the nearby municipality of Marantao, the terrorists are suspected to take advantage of concealment provided by floating clumps of water hyacinth on Lake Lanao to infiltrate into the Islamic City of Marawi to reinforce their comrades.
Those inside the city are apparently able to make use of the underground drainage system to move from one part of Ground Zero to another, or, not so far-fetched, to slip away in their escape making like possums underneath the surface.
Sounds pretty gross. But anything to establish an Islamic State. Even the women and children are throwing in their weight.
“Our troops in the field are seeing women and children shooting at our troops, so that’s why it seems they are not running out of fighters,” Lieutenant General Carlito Galvez, the regional military chief, told reporters, Reuters reported.
The Philippine army is employing both women and men in the battle to retake the city, but mostly male radical Islamist fighters have been waging the insurgency until now, according to the military.
So where did these women and children come from and why are they fighting now? They could be family members but who knows. More mysteries of the Battle of Marawi which might never be answered.
While the AFP continues its airstrikes on what it believes is Isnilon Hapilon's location,
The Armed Forces has expressed confidence that air strikes launched on Wednesday morning hit the hideout in Marawi City of Abu Sayyaf Group leader Isnilon Hapilon.
they also believe that Abdullah Maute was killed in an airstrike last month.
Lieutenant General Carlito Galvez, chief of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) Western Mindanao Command (Westmincom), cited information in the social media application Telegram where the local terrorist group is reportedly communicating with the Islamic State (ISIS), the international terrorist organization it pledged allegiance to.
"Abdullah Maute is already killed. Chatter over Telegram indicates he is killed," Galvez said in a press conference in Marawi City on Monday, September 4.
Galvez showed the media online posts that pay tribute to the "martyred" Sheik Al Miyahad Abu Al Hassan, the name that Abdullah Maute goes by in the ISIS network.
Galvez said the military is working to get "physical evidence" such as DNA to confirm Abdullah's death.
How is this even possible? How are these fighters able to use social media to communicate with anyone? Why are the signals in the area not jammed? How is electricity still being delivered to the area where the terrorists are hiding out so they can charge their phones and computers? Why wouldn't the AFP take every measure to cut Maute off from the rest of the world? Don't they want to prevent reinforcements from joining the fight?
Not cutting off the electricity sounds stupid but maybe allowing Maute to have contact with the outside world has its benefits and is part of a larger chess game. But here is something really stupid. Remember when Mindanao State University opened?
Anyone with any brains knew this was a bad idea.
Authorities closed the main gate of Mindanao State University (MSU) on Friday after a stray bullet killed an executive of the Civil Service Commission (CSC) in Marawi City Thursday, security officials said.
Capt. Jo-Ann Petinglay, the spokesperson of Western Mindanao Command (Westmincom) and Joint Task Force Marawi, said the main gate was closed as the incident occurred just outside the premises fronting Gate 1 where Marvin Ablando was hit by a stray bullet.
A stray bullet killed a man at the front entrance of MSU? Say it ain't so! I thought everything
in that area was under control. What could have gone wrong?
Although the military has claimed to have gained back control of most parts of Marawi previously taken by Maute gunmen and their allies, top military officials here warned that nobody remains safe from stray bullets in the city’s battle zone.
“It showed the city is not yet considered generally safe for civilians,” Petinglay said.
“In Marawi City, we have not declared any safe area from stray bullets,” he said.
The military merely declared “controlled areas,” which means it had “control over the entry and exit and the security condition inside those areas.”
So close down the school! How hard
is that? No area is safe from stray bullets and the entire area is not safe for civilians
but they are letting civilians
into the area to attend classes?? All these children
are in danger of being killed by stray bullets!
What is wrong with the AFP that they are allowing all these children to be put in danger? The government is so anxious to get everything back to normal and rebuild and the people are so eager to move back in to the homes the left that they cannot focus on first getting the job done and ending the siege.
Allowing classes to continue is stupid.
But there is more stupidity yet.
The Philippines military has teamed up with Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) fighters as it prepares for a final assault against the Maute armed group in the southern city of Marawi.
Soldiers were seen mingling freely with several hundred MILF fighters who have joined forces for an assault on fighters on the southern island of Mindanao.
The joint operation is the latest tactic by the Philippine government to try to stamp out fighters linked to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group after months of battling a separate faction of fighters who have besieged the city of Marawi.
The alliance with MILF included "providing them with indirect fire support and even air support and other expertise," Major-General Arnel dela Vega told AFP, adding that the awkwardness of fighting alongside former long-time foes had evaporated.
The AFP is teaming up with one Islamic terrorist group in order to destroy another Islamic terrorist group. How can the AFP trust these guys who are responsible for the death of the SAF 44 in 2015? Forming an alliance with an armed terrorist group gives them the legitimacy they do not deserve and places the entire nation at risk for more violence. MILF is a criminal terrorist organisation which must be dismantled. Only traitors or complete idiots would think this is a good move. They cannot even play a simple basketball game without killing one another.
A friendly basketball game involving two groups of Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) rebels in North Cotabato turned bloody on Thursday when it ended in a shooting spree, the police said Friday.
He said the suspects and the victims were playing basketball in the village involving “pot money” as bet when the game eventually went “physical.”
One of the players then grabbed his Armalite assault rifle and opened fire. Relatives of the slain MILF members retaliated, triggering a gun battle.
“There was a misunderstanding that turned into a heated argument until they took their guns and started shooting at one another,” a witness quoted Aliman as telling police investigators.
And Duterte is eager to sign the BBL into law and give these guys their own independent Islamic State in Mindanao? What does he think will happen? It will be worse than the wild West with everyone armed and everyone their own law. This basketball incident happened in North Cotabato. Hear what Dutere has to say about this area which is populated with MILF and other armed terrorists groups.
There will be no peace in Mindanao for a long time as trouble is brewing in Cotabato City, President Duterte said yesterday.
Speaking at the closing ceremony of the Mindanao Business Conference in Cagayan de Oro, Duterte said after the embattled city of Marawi, it is Cotabato City that is going to explode next.
“If things cannot be helped, Cotabato City will explode and there will really be fighting,” he said.
“Cotabato puputok yan dahil ang isang lote tatlo ang may-ari (Cotabato will really explode because a land is owned by three people),” he added.
He pointed out that the city is the next flash point after Marawi, which is now on the third month of a siege carried out by the Islamic State-linked Maute group.
More war? Sounds like an opportunity for the USA to start its proxy drone war in the Philippines.
The US has deployed one of its unmanned aircraft to Mindanao in a bid to do more surveillance activities in support of the Philippine military’s counterterrorism operations.
While this drone is allegedly just for surveillance it is a continuation, of the USA's military involvement in the region. Were the situation to get out of hand and Mindanao to explode, as Duterte thinks it will, it could be that American troops will see combat in the Philippines. With the sabre rattling of Kim Jong-un and the growing threat of ISIS in SEA the entire region is a volatile ticking time bomb ready to explode.
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