Officials blamed over Philippines raid in which 44 police died

A botched police raid that killed 44 elite officers and jeopardised a landmark peace deal in the Philippines involved blunders by officials from the field commander all the way up to President Benigno S Aquino III, according to a report released yesterday.

The investigative report by a specially created government panel describes a disastrous operation in which police radio batteries failed, ammunition was defective, officers were left stranded and exposed under enemy fire and nearby military units with access to aircraft and artillery were kept in the dark about the details of the raid and left unable to rescue the police.

Defective

The operation was “defective from the very beginning”, said the report, which will serve as the official government account of the episode and will be used to mete out punishment to guilty officials.

The January 25th police operation involved about 400 elite officers who conducted an early morning raid in the small southern town of Mamasapano. The target of the raid was Zulkifli bin Hir, a Malaysian citizen and member of the Jemaah Islamiyah terrorist network.

The police said that they killed Zulkifli during a gun battle in his hut but that they immediately came under enemy fire and had to flee. Forty-four of the officers were killed while fighting their way out. The firefight involved Islamic extremists and other armed groups, as well as the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, which signed a peace deal with the government last March.

Rebel leaders say that despite a ceasefire requirement that they be informed of police actions in advance, they were surprised by the raid and fought back in self-defence. The ground commander, Getulio Napenas, received the harshest criticism in the report. He was found to have concocted a faulty operation outside the chain of command. – (New York Times service)