A number of soldiers pursuing Maute extremists in Marawi City were killed unintentionally in airstrikes, officers reported Wednesday.
10 troopers had been killed and 8 other people had been wounded after government forces mistakenly introduced the bomb, Protection Secretary Delfin Lorenzana stated.
“A team of our personal army military men had been strike by our own airstrike. We misplaced 10, [they were] killed and 8 wounded,” Lorenzana stated inside a speech in an occasion in Mandaluyong.
“It’s sad, but sometimes that occurs… Maybe the coordination was not correctly carried out so we strike our own people,” he additional.
The government is still investigating what caused the incident.
“We will come up having a report, hindi pa namin alam e,” Lorenzana told reporters.
The Armed Forces from the Philippines (AFP) however noted that eleven troopers died whilst seven others had been wounded.
“One of our SF-260 aircraft conducting airstrike that working day was effectively hitting its assigned target in its earlier sorties, However, it was unfortunate that the last ordinance round it sent went wayward for an unidentified purpose and accidentally strike and caused the life of our ground forces,” AFP spokesman Brigadier-General Restituto Padilla said in a separate press briefing.
“We are deeply saddened by what transpired. We mourn the reduction of eleven of our courageous harbingers of peace and also the wounding of seven others.”
One of the fatalities had been 7 members from the forty fourth Infantry Battalion and four others in the fifteen Infantry Battalion, ABS-CBN sources said.
Padilla said the AFP will form a board of inquiry which will examine if the accident was caused by equipment failure or human error.
Authorities forces happen to be using a mix of ground functions by troopers and helicopter airstrikes to test to dislodge rebels linked to the Islamic Condition team, who have occupied parts of Marawi Metropolis because May 23.
About ninety percent of Marawi has been retaken by security forces, however the rebels experienced kept up the fight with rifles and ammunition stolen from the law enforcement station, a prison, and an armored police vehicle.
‘The AFP will let its floor commander decide whether to suspend airstrikes towards the rebels.
“We will not prevent the bottom commander from using this means of delivering army power if he decides that it is still needed and required. But we’ll include appropriate actions to ensure that this kind of an incident is avoided,” Padilla said.
The combating has left dead 120 militants and led to the recovery of 98 high-powered weapons.
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