Philippines says 5-month siege is over
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THE Philippine government declared the end yesterday to the militant siege of a southern city that lasted five months, left more than 1,100 people dead and sparked fears of the Islamic State group gaining a foothold in Southeast Asia.
Speaking at an annual meeting of the region’s defense ministers, Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana said troops had recovered 42 bodies of the last group of militants.
“Those are the last group of stragglers of Mautes and they were caught in one building so there was a firefight, so they were finished,” he said. “There are no more militants inside Marawi City.”
The siege had sparked fears the Islamic State group would influence, fund and strengthen local militias as it was losing ground in Syria and Iraq.
The defeat of the IS-linked uprising and the deaths of some of its leaders have been a relief to the region.
“The Philippine security forces, aided by its government and the massive support of the Filipino people, have nipped the budding infrastructure and defeated terrorism in the Philippines,” Lorenzana said.
He said the achievement shows how regional cooperation can contain the spread of terrorism. “In crushing thus far the most serious attempt to export violent extremism and radicalism in the Philippines and the region, we have contributed to preventing its spread in Asia.”
“Wake-up call for region’
Fighting terrorism is high on the agenda of the Southeast Asian defense ministers’ meeting at the Clark free port north of Manila. As the meetings opened, the head of the Brunei delegation expressed condolences for the loss of lives in Marawi but congratulated the Philippines for being able to liberate the city.
Malaysia’s minister said the siege was a wake-up call for the region. “We have to be very careful. What happened in Marawi can happen anywhere,” Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said.
Hundreds of militants, many waving Islamic State group-style black flags, launched the siege on May 23 in Marawi, a bastion of Islamic faith in the south of the largely Roman Catholic Philippines, by seizing the city’s central business district and outlying communities.
They ransacked banks and shops, including gun stores, looted houses and smashed statues in a Roman Catholic cathedral, according to the military.
The fighting has left at least 1,131 people dead, including 919 militants and 165 soldiers and police. At least 1,780 of the hostages seized by the militants, including a Roman Catholic priest, were rescued. The final group of 20 captives were freed overnight, Colonel Romeo Brawner said at a news conference on Sunday. That left the gunmen with none of the hostages they had used as human shields to slow the military advance for months.
The disastrous uprising has displaced hundreds of thousands of Marawi residents.
Fighting erupted as the Philippines was hosting annual summit meetings of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations this year, along with the 10-nation bloc’s Asian and Western counterparts, including the United States and Australia. The US and Australia have deployed surveillance aircraft and drones to help Philippine troops rout the Marawi militants.
Last week, troops killed the final two surviving leaders of the siege, one of them Isnilon Hapilon, who is listed among the FBI’s most-wanted terror suspects.
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