MATALAM, North Cotabato—Serious security concerns continue to hound North Cotabato province and only the government is acting to address them, security forces said Friday in response to leftist claims that continuing operations are meant to derail ongoing peace talks.
In fact, Matalam police director Chief Insp. Sunny Leoncito said entire families are being forced to evacuate because of security threats from Muslim extremists, communist rebels and escaped inmates of the North Cotabato District Jail.
Leoncito said some 50 families were forced to evacuate two remote villages in Barangay Tamped in Matalam after a firefight erupted Friday between authorities and a lawless armed group he did not identify.
The displaced families were from Sitio Imelda, Barangay Taguranao and adjacent Sitio Maligaya in Barangay Tamped, he said.
He said joint elements of police’s elite Special Action Force and Public Safety Company and the Army’s 7th Infantry Battalion were conducting a law enforcement operation against the inmates who bolten the North Cotabato District Jail last Jan. 3.
According to Leoncito, some of the 50 armed men they encountered were fugitives of the NCDJ who joined the bandit group of Commander Derby operating in the area. Derby himself was an escapee from the NCDJ in 2015.
Earlier this month, Derby’s group stormed the NCDJ in a bid to set free notorious cohorts in the penitentiary and resulted in the escape of 158 inmates in the escape that has been described as the biggest jailbreak in Philippine history.
But the leftist Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas on Friday insisted that the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the Department of National Defense were lying about the armed clash between government soldiers and the New Peoples’ Army in Makilala town last Jan. 21.
“The AFP’s extortion alibi is a lie. Soldiers have been conducting military operations in farmers’ communities since last year,” said Gerry Alborme, chairperson of KMP-North Cotabato.
“Soldiers from the 39th and 72nd IB have conducted military operations in the villages of Lukatong, Israel, Kisante, Biangan and Bulatucan in Makilala, North Cotabato,” he said. Makilala is about 32 kilometers from Matalam.
The clash in Makilala caused a controversy in the recently concluded third round of peace talks between the government and the National Democratic Front as NDFP peace panel chairman Fidel Agcaoili said that “it appears that there are systematic and deliberate efforts to sabotage the peace talks.”