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Horror Tales In Heroes� Ward
WAR ZONE � Battle slogans are painted on wooden planks attached to the front of an armored personnel carrier (APC) parked at a main road in Pantar, Lanao del Norte, Wednesday, as soldiers await orders on the fourth week of armed conflict with Maute terrorists in Marawi City. (Reuters | Manila Bulletin)
June 22nd, 2017 | 09:43 AM | 2198 views
MANILA
Inside the “Heroes’ Ward” of a Manila hospital, wounded soldiers read the Bible and recount horror stories of an unprecedented urban war against fighters linked to the Islamic State (IS) group.
The month-long combat in Marawi City has claimed the lives of 62 troops and injured hundreds of others, while raising fears the Philippines has suddenly become a favorite new battleground for IS.
At the crowded hospital ward, soldiers give harrowing examples of how the Philippine military – with little experience in urban warfare – were caught unprepared for their enemy’s tactics and brutality in house-to-house combat.
Marine Sergeant Sandy Benitez said he survived a battle that killed 13 other troops by crawling for nearly five hours the short stretch of street while trading fire with snipers, after a rocket-propelled grenade pierced his left foot.
“That was the worst firefight I’ve ever been in,” Benitez, a 13-year veteran who had previously battled Islamist militants on remote and mountainous southern islands, told AFP.
“Some of my wounded colleagues, they were losing hope and getting rattled. Some were crying.”
Benitez, 34, said he was mostly calm throughout the ordeal, except when he watched a rocket-propelled grenade kill one of his friends who had enlisted with him.
“When you see your classmate die, sir, you can’t help but shed a tear,” he said.
WELL EQUIPPED
Benitez said his unit had been deployed in the evening to try and capture one of the militants’ strongholds, supposedly with the advantage of night vision goggles.
“But they threw gasoline at us, molotov bombs. They created fires, so they had visual on us as well,” he said.
Government troops have decades of experience battling Islamic militants and communist rebels resulting in thousands of deaths but those wars have been largely waged in rural and mountainous settings.
The nation’s military chiefs and frontline troops such as Benitez say they have relatively little experience in the type of fighting being waged in Marawi, a city of 200,000 residents.
“If the fight was held in a mountain without its share of civilians roaming around the battleground it would have been very simple,” AFP spokesman Brig. Gen. Restituto Padilla told reporters last week.
URBAN WARFARE
A military commander overseeing the battle in Marawi who fought many wars in southern Mindanao, but who asked not to be named to speak candidly, said most troops were learning on the job.
“We have a shallow pool of highly trained people for this specific situation,” the commander told AFP, as he described soldiers spending two days trying unsuccessfully to clear a single house and threats such as trip-wire bombs.
At a military hospital, Army Corporal Benie Flores, 30, was sitting on a bed with his left shin snapped in two by a sniper bullet on the third day of the conflict.
Flores said he had never been injured in his seven years as a soldier fighting the Abu Sayyaf, a US-listed terrorist group based in Basilan – one of the remote southern islands made up mostly of mountains and jungles.
“The difference in Basilan is full of trees while Marawi is full of rooms and civilians,” he said.
AIR AMBULANCE
Meanwhile, the presidential plane has started operating as an air ambulance for troops wounded in the battlefield in Marawi City after President Duterte gave up the travel privilege.
On Tuesday night, at least nine injured troops were airlifted to Manila aboard the presidential Fokker F-28 from Cagayan de Oro city.
The President offered the use of his plane to ferry the wounded soldiers after trying to boost the morale of the troops confined at a military hospital in Cagayan de Oro City. He boarded an ambulance with the soldiers on the way to the airport and later posed for photographs inside the aircraft, according to Malacañang.
The soldiers were among the 90 combatants injured in the fighting in Marawi City in recent days.
Padilla thanked the President for the privilege.
“I’d like to give notice that as the President has promised for the use of his presidential aircraft last (Tuesday) night on our way back to Manila from Cagayan de Oro and Iligan, those who were required by our medical professionals to be evacuated to Manila, used the presidential aircraft and other aircraft of the Air Force to be transported to Manila,” Padilla said during the “Mindanao Hour” briefing in Malacañang.
“We’d like to pass on the thanks of our Armed Forces on behalf of the Chief of Staff and the wounded warriors that we brought to Manila for further treatment,” he said.
In his remarks before the troops in Cagayan de Oro, the President hailed the bravery of the government troops in fighting the extremists in Marawi. He also extended his condolences to the families of slain troops, saying he is saddened by the casualties.
PORT ALERT
Immigration officers manning the Ninoy Aquino International Airport (NAIA) and other ports nationwide were ordered yesterday to be strict and cautious in allowing the entry of foreign visitors into the country following reports that some terrorists in Marawi City were foreigners.
Immigration chief Jaime Morente ordered Marc Red Mariñas, the bureau’s port operations division chief to post intelligence agents in various ports to watch out for suspected foreign terrorists who might attempt to enter the country.
Morente said immigration officers should thoroughly screen foreign passengers.
“Those who have questionable documents or doubtful purposes in coming to the country should be excluded and booked on the first available flight to their port of origin,” Morente told Mariñas.
The BI chief said that it is not easy to assess and establish if an arriving foreign visitor is a suspected terrorist especially if the latter is completely documented and is able to satisfactorily answer questions propounded to him by the immigration officer.
“That is why we have in our database the names of thousands of suspected international terrorists given to us by law enforcement and intelligence agencies here and abroad,” he said.
A foreign passenger whose name and description matches the person appearing in the derogatory list should immediately be turned back and barred from entering the country.
Mariñas explained that most of the foreign jihadists involved in the Marawi siege used the backdoor skirting inspection by immigration authorities given the country’s long and porous shorelines. (With a report from Jun Ramirez)
Source:
courtesy of MANILA BULLETIN
by AFP and Genalyn Kabiling
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