MANILA (Reuters) - Islamic State-inspired militants who
battled troops in a southern
Philippine city for 154 days sought a way out two
months into the fierce conflict, but the government ignored their proposal, a
separatist negotiator and a minister said.
The takeover of Marawi was the biggest security crisis in
decades in the Philippines, fuelling concern that Islamic State and Indonesian
and Malaysian extremists might have greater sway among its minority Muslims
than previously thought.
Abdullah Maute, one of those leading the Dawla Islamiya rebel
alliance in the city, had engaged Muslim leaders to urge President Rodrigo
Duterte to let the militants escape in return for the release of scores of
captives, one cleric said.
Agakhan Sharief, a Marawi Muslim cleric well known to the
militant Maute clan, said that around July 27, Abdullah Maute asked for help in
arranging for the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), a separatist group at
peace with the government, to receive hostages and escort militants out of the
city.
“He agreed to negotiate to leave Marawi on the condition the
MILF is involved,” Sharief told Reuters.
”I told him when he goes out of Marawi, there’s no guarantee
the military will not kill him. He said, ‘No problem’.
“He was very serious at the time.”
The violence in Marawi killed more than 1,100 people, mostly
rebels, and the city center has been destroyed by artillery and government air
strikes.
The military believes Abdullah was killed in an air strike in
early August, but the body was not found. His brother and co-leader,
Omarkhayam, was killed on Oct. 16, along with Isnilon Hapilon, Islamic State’s
“emir” in Southeast Asia.
The government allowed the MILF to operate a “peace corridor”
in Marawi that helped rescue hundreds of civilians. The MILF’s top peace
negotiator, Mohagher Iqbal, confirmed Maute made the proposal, but the
government had ignored it.
“There was no formal negotiation and our role was only to
facilitate. It’s up to two sides to agree,” he told Reuters.
“We had some reservations about the deal. Although some of
the Maute members were former MILF, we doubted their intentions and sincerity.
We do not know if they would honor the deal.”
Scores of hostages escaped or were rescued in the last few
months of the fighting, but it is unclear how many may have been killed.
Authorities have yet to retrieve all bodies from a battle
zone that is still littered with unexploded munitions and homemade bombs. The
army says a few militant holdouts are still hiding in what is now ground zero.
Defence Secretary Delfin Lorenzana told Reuters Duterte was
aware of Maute’s request to flee Marawi in exchange for hostages, but the offer
was too little, too late.
”Too many soldiers had been killed,“ he said. ”If they had
proposed that in the first week, when there had not been so many casualties,
then it would have been OK.
“It was too late, he (Duterte) was no longer inclined to
entertain any deals with them.”
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