(Eagle News) –Government forces have retaken Marawi City’s Islamic Center mosque or Grand Mosque which had been used by Islamist extremists, particularly the Maute Group, to position their snipers and to hide their hostages.
The mosque was retaken before the visit of President Rodrigo Duterte in Marawi for the third time on Thursday afternoon (Aug. 24)
For the soldiers and the policemen fighting the Islamist extremists, this is a big win as they predict that the Marawi City could be totally in government’s hands by September, or much earlier than the end of martial law in Mindanao in December.
They said that that the Islamist terrorists are now occupying less than a square kilometer of space in Marawi City.
Recovering the city’s Grand Mosque is a big win for the government, according to the Armed Forces of the Philippines.
AFP spokesperson Brigadier General Restituto Padilla, Jr. said it took the government troops almost a month to retake the Grand Mosque or the Islamic Center from the terrorist Maute group.
“We did not conduct a frontal attack because we wanted to preserve the Grand Mosque, owing to the promise of our Commander-in-Chief, the President, and our Chief of Staff, who strongly provided guidance not to destroy any place of worship even if international protocols would allow us to do that,” Padilla said during the regular Mindanao Hour briefing in Malacañan on Friday.
“We met resistance in the surrounding areas over that less than a month of time, until we got to that point when we were able to
assault the Grand Mosque,” Padilla explained.
The AFP official said the government forces are now clearing the Grand Mosque of unexploded ordnance and IEDs.
“The Grand Mosque is located in the central area of Marawi. It is the most significant landmark because it being the biggest mosque in the area,” Padilla said.
“So having it under the hands of government provides us the impetus to symbolically say that nakuha na natin ‘yung sentro mismo ng bayan,” he said.
For Lanao del Sur Crisis Management Committee spokesperson Zia Alonto Adiong, the recovery of the Grand Mosque renews hope that the war in the city could end soon, and the residents of Marawi could once again live a peaceful life.
“This is where the Maranao people draw their strength from,” Adiong said.
