MARAWI CITY (MindaNews / 6 December)—The military has launched a manhunt against four leaders of the local Dawlah-Islamiya-Maute terrorist group believed to have been responsible for Sunday’s bombing at the Mindanao State University gymnasium that left four dead and 46 others wounded.
Lt. Gen. William Gonzalez, commander of the AFP Western Mindanao, said Monday that the four terror leaders were in constant communications with each other when they carried out the attack on worshippers during Advent Sunday at the Dimaporo Gymnasium.
“They were working together in carrying out the attack,” Gonzalez said during a briefing at the headquarters of the 103rd Infantry Division here.
An earlier MindaNews report identified one of the leaders as Khadafi Mimbesa, a resident of Masiu town in Lanao del Sur who uses the aliases “ Engineer, Kadi and Akoya.” He is allegedly a bomb-making expert and sub-leader of the Dawlah Islamiyah-Maute Group in Lanao del Sur.
President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. on Monday ordered the Armed Forces and the Philippine National Police to bring the perpetrators to justice and assure the safety of students and teachers in the MSU main campus.
Marcos was scheduled to come to Marawi on Tuesday but Malacañang said the President contracted the COVID-19 virus again.
He instead sent a message of condolences to the families of the four fatalities in last Sunday’s bombing.
Major Alinaid Moner, Lanao del Sur PNP spokesperson, identified the four victims as Junrey Barbante, a fisheries teacher; Evangeline Aromin, a professor of MSU-Iligan Institute of Technology and a resident of Bansalan, Davao del Sur; Riza Daniel of Kapalaran, Tangub City in Misamis Occidental; and Janine Arinas, a student and resident of Barangay Lorenzo, Kapatagan town in Lanao del Sur.
Meanwhile, Brig. Gen. Allan Nobleza, chief of the Police Regional Office of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region (PRO-BAR), deployed 150 elite policemen to patrol the streets of the MSU-Marawi campus to restore the confidence of the students and teachers.
“Your first duty is protect and restore the confidence of the students and the teachers,” Nobleza told the company of policemen.
But students continue to leave the campus upon urging of their parents who fear an escalation of violence in the state campus.
Michael Joey Hernando, of the Iligan City Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office, said their office processed 642 students who left the MSU campus on Tuesday.
Among them were students from Surigao del Sur who left the campus on board three passenger vans sent by Gov. Alexander Pimentel.
Steven Cassion, of Tandag City in Surigao del Norte, said he had the bad luck of bringing his wife Jenessa and one-year-old son Liam to MSU for a family pictorial and some vacation. They were among the 40 fetched by the vans sent by the Surigao del Sur provincial government.
“We are all scared here and we all decided to go home,” he told MindaNews.
Nick Jabagat, of the Cagayan de Oro Disaster Risk Reduction and Management Office, said 46 students boarded their bus from Iligan to Cagayan de Oro on Monday night.
He said three students were from Cagayan de Oro, 35 from Agusan del Sur, two from Balingasag in Misamis Oriental, three from Surigao City, and three from the Davao area. (Froilan Gallardo / MindaNews)