The Broken Souls of Marawi

  

 After she heard the first few shots ring out a week ago in Marawi, the centre of Islamic faith in this predominantly Christian nation, Jemaliah Batingulo said she locked all the doors to keep her five children safe inside. But when young masked men with long rifles barged into nearby homes and began shooting non-Muslims, she grabbed her children and quickly escaped.

  Minutes later, she saw her wooden house burst into flames, she said. “There was gunfire everywhere,” Ms. Batingulo, 36, a widow said.

“We all started running and running until the edge of town. We didn’t have any food, just water we grabbed before fleeing.”

Ms. Batingulo was one of thousands of people forced to flee the onslaught of militants loyal to the Islamic State group that has convulsed this city of 2,00,000, prompting President Rodrigo Duterte to impose martial law on the southern Philippines and posing a major challenge to his young government.

Young fighters

   Ms. Batingulo, who is Muslim, said that three months ago, her husband was fatally shot by several men she described as “young fighters” after an argument, the first of several violent episodes that she said underlined the militants’ infiltration of the city. She said her husband had become increasingly concerned about the extreme beliefs espoused by the young men, who flocked to the local mosque, where this month religious leaders held a series of meetings with foreigners whom officials here described as militants.

   At a gymnasium in Marawi set up as a makeshift shelter for those who had fled the fighting, Ms. Batingulo and others described days of sheer terror in a once relatively peaceful city on the island of Mindanao known more for producing Islamic scholars than violence.

   As Alinoor Tarip, 22, struggled to put his colicky one-year-old daughter, Hamida, to sleep, he said he was “enraged” by the clashes consuming his hometown. “We were trapped inside our family home in the first two days,” he said. “But they didn’t harm us when we told them we were Muslims. Perhaps they saw my baby when they knocked.” “They asked me to recite some verses in the Quran and left when they were satisfied,” he said.

Marawi first erupted in flames when the military and the police moved to arrest Isnilon Hapilon, a leader of Abu Sayyaf, an extremist group wanted for a string of atrocities, including bombings and kidnappings.

   But the government forces faced surprisingly strong resistance from heavily armed young fighters belonging to the Maute group, radical Islamist fighters blamed for a recent spate of bombings. The government said foreign fighters believed to be from Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia aided the group. Clashes followed as the insurgents spread out across the city, which is halved by the Agus River, a crucial trading and transportation route in the region.

   The government said it had retaken about 85% of the city, but the militants had positioned snipers in buildings. Fighting had decreased somewhat with government air attacks taking place daily in the morning.