「日刊まにら新聞」ウェブ

The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) said they are in the “final stage” of their operation as eight more buildings in Marawi City, one of which served as a machine gun nest and snipers nest, were cleared of the Maute group.

“What I just want to tell you now is we are nearing its ending, meaning we are nearing the conclusion. We are in the final stage of our operation in Marawi. The challenges that we are facing are very difficult,” Col. Edgard Arevalo, AFP public affairs chief, told reporters in Camp Aguinaldo Wednesday.

“We have met this morning and the report to us is that we have recovered eight additional buildings which is previously their stronghold, previously serve as their sniper nests,” Arevalo said.

“We are happy because we have recovered eight buildings that were previously occupied by the Maute/ISIS group,” he added.

Arevalo did not give details on the recovery of the eight buildings but he noted government forces have also seized additional high power firearms from the terrorists, he said.

He emphasized the importance of the recovery of the buildings.

“What is important here is we were able to get one building there and it’s overlooking the city which also serves as the previous machine gun nest, snipers nest of the enemy,” he said.

“So it’s a big thing for us. We say that their resistance are continues to dwindle, continues to weaken but we are not going to take this lightly… We have to be very careful with our actions because they (are) still civilians. They still have hostages,” he added.

Arevalo said the military are inching its way forward to attain their three-fold objective that includes neutralization of “all the members of the Maute in Marawi and at the least degrade their capability to put up any other terrorist activity in other areas, springing from Marawi.”

“Second is for us to save the civilians, rescue civilians who are still trapped in the area or being held hostage and third to set conditions for reconstruction and rehabilitation of Marawi, we are now looking at the third option because we see that we are nearing conclusion of this conflict,” he said. Robina Asido/DMS