MARAWI: Philippine security forces bombed residential areas in a southern city on Thursday as they battled Islamist militants who were holding hostages and reported to have murdered at least 11 civilians.

An initial rampage by gunmen who have pledged allegiance to the militant Islamic State group through the mainly Muslim city of Marawi on Tuesday prompted President Rodrigo Duterte to impose martial law across the southern third of the Philippines.

Authorities said ending the crisis was proving extremely hard because, although there were only 30 to 40 remaining gunmen, the militants were moving nimbly through homes, had planted bombs in the streets and were holding hostages.

Intense gunfighting could be heard constantly throughout the day, according to an AFP reporter in the city, and the military said it had dropped bombs on residential neighbourhoods.

“We are using surgical air strikes,” local military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Jo-Ar Herrera told reporters in Marawi.

Most of Marawi’s 200,000 residents had fled the city, which is about 800 kilometres south of Manila, but Herrera said those who remained had been warned to get out of the areas where there was bombing and fighting.

Eleven soldiers, two policemen and 31 militants have died in the three days of fighting, according to authorities. Thirty-nine soldiers have been wounded, the military said.

Herrera said two civilians had also been killed inside a hospital that the gunmen had occupied on Tuesday, and the military was investigating reports that nine people had been murdered at a checkpoint the militants had set up.

SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors jihadists online, said IS claimed killing more than 70 soldiers in Marawi and 10 more in the remote southern island of Jolo. The claims could not be independently confirmed.

The fighting erupted on Tuesday after security forces raided a house where they believed Isnilon Hapilon, a leader of the infamous Abu Sayyaf kidnap-for-ransom gang and Philippine head of IS, was hiding. The United States regards Hapilon as one of the world’s most dangerous terrorists, offering a bounty of $5 million for his capture.

The raid went spectacularly wrong as dozens of gunmen emerged to repel the security forces, then went on a rampage across the city while flying black IS flags.

The gunmen belonged to the Maute group, which along with Hapilon’s faction of the Abu Sayyaf, had pledged allegiance to IS, authorities said.

The militants raided two jails, leading to the escape of more than 100 inmates, according to Mujiv Hataman, the governor of a Muslim self-rule area that includes Marawi. They also set fire to many buildings, including a church and a university.

An enraged Duterte, who was in Moscow to meet Russian President Vladimir Putin, declared martial law shortly after the fighting erupted and cut short his trip to fly home and deal with the crisis.

Published in Dawn, May 26th, 2017