MARAWI: Thousands of displaced remain in emergency shelters and the threat of Islamic extremists and unexploded bombs lingers in the rubble of a southern Philippine city, where survivors on Wednesday remembered a disastrous five-month siege by IS-aligned fighters that began a year ago.

The Rev Teresito Soganub, who survived 117 days of captivity by the extremists in Marawi city, said that aside from the devastation, it would take years for him and other civilians to overcome the horror of having lived through air strikes and gunbattles that threatened them day and night.

The government is finalising a plan to rebuild the most devastated commercial and residential districts, where the carcasses of pockmarked homes, buildings and mosques stand eerily and gathering weeds in an urban wasteland guarded by troops.

The city’s journey back to normalcy may take years at a huge cost, said officials, some of whom have warned that if the rehabilitation falters, the restiveness it would generate could be exploited by Muslim militants.

The May 23 siege that was crushed in October killed more than 1,100 mostly militants, left the mosque-studded city’s heartland in rubbles, prompted President Rodrigo Duterte to place the southern third of the country under martial law and reinforced fears that IS was gaining a foothold in the Asian region. The months of intense fighting forced hundreds of thousands of residents of Marawi and outlying towns to flee for their lives.

While many have returned home after the attack was quelled, thousands more whose houses were destroyed in the main battle area that remains off-limits to civilians are still living in evacuation centres and temporary shelters, officials said.

At least 50 people are still listed as missing and many human remains have not yet been identified and have been buried in numbered graves. Presidential adviser Jesus Dureza called for patience after some disgruntled Marawi residents held a noisy protest.

Published in Dawn, May 24th, 2018