Marawi under siege

The Islamic City of Marawi is located on the island of Mindanao, in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, consisting of five predominantly Muslim provinces. Marawi has about 249,000 inhabitants and is the largest Islamic city in what elsewhere is a Catholic country.

Here, on May 23, 2017, the Filipino army carries out an operation to capture Isnilon Hapilon, leader of the Islamic State in the Philippines. About 700 militants of terrorist groups Maute and Abu Sayyaf occupy several areas of the city, including the Amai Pakpak Hospital, the City Hall and the University, and attack the military base of Camp Ranao. In the streets, machine gun strikes: terrorists kill policemen and civilians, attack a Protestant cultural center and burn down the cathedral.

During the clashes between militiamen and the Filipino army, several areas of the city are occupied and about two thousand civilians remain trapped in their homes. Many of these are kidnapped by jihadists and then used as human shields. Tens of thousands of people are evacuated from the city, shelters arise and immediately saturate.

Marawi is a ghost town: entire buildings destroyed by air bombardments, houses torn by rockets and heavy machine guns. Data on displaced people estimate from 360,000 to 430,000, distributed among the about one hundred evacuation centers made available by the community and the government. In the center of Saguiaran, several cases of malnutrition have been recorded among children and many are the health problems for people: the deaths amount to forty. Only some centers have clinics; in others, people must be moved to different locations to receive care.

At the Capin funeral service in Iligan, a handwritten list hanging in a room, titled “Marawi casualities”, chronologically describes the number of bodies, sex and condition in which they have been found. Seventeen black bags, containing human remains, stay awaiting mass burial for more than a month.

After more than a hundred days of conflict, returning to a normal life is still far off. In some municipalities, tents have been provided by the Department of Social Welfare and Development to house families in anticipation of the reconstruction of the city.

So far, what remains of the Islamic City of Marawi are only its ruins.