Bangsamoro regional officials and senior leaders of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front will cooperate in helping sustain the ceasefire between two feuding groups in Tipo-Tipo, Basilan that figured in gunfights on Tuesday, October 28, that left four villagers wounded and forced more than a thousand families to relocate to safe areas.
Abdulrauf Macacua, chief minister of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, who is chief of the MILF’s Bangsamoro Islamic Armed Forces, said on Wednesday, October 29, that the two groups had repositioned away from the center of Tipo-Tipo through the intercession of provincial officials and Army and police units in the province.
Radio reports on Wednesday in Cotabato City stated the Gov. Mujiv Hataman, chairman of the multi-sector Basilan Provincial Peace and Order Council, had sent emissaries to leaders of the two enemy groups to convince them to reconcile.
Tipo-Tipo residents who abandoned their homes due to Tuesday’s hostilities in the center of their municipality are reluctant to return for fear of a repeat of the incident.
Leaders of one of the two enemy groups, identified with the MILF, is related to an Islamic preacher, the 40-year-old Nadzri Asdana Tarahin, who was killed in nearby Lamitan City on October 21.
Taharin’s assailants belong to the other group that they traded shots with in Barangay Poblacion in Tipo-Tipo on Tuesday, according to local executives.
One Tarahin’s killer is a member of their local government unit’s security team, according to residents of Tipo-Tipo, among them members of Basilan’s Islamic religious community.
Photo shows a Yakan family fleeing from Barangay Poblacion in Tipo-Tipo amid Tuesday’s gunfights in the area between two groups armed with assault rifles and grenade launchers.
Brig. Gen. Jaysen De Guzman, director of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region, said their units in Basilan and the Army’s 101st Infantry Brigade are now in full control of the situation in Tipo-Tipo.
He said they will support the efforts of Hataman and his constituent-leaders in Tipo-Tipo in returning the evacuees to their villages that they abandoned for fear of getting trapped in a crossfire.
Photo shows a Yakan family fleeing from Barangay Poblacion in Tipo-Tipo amid Tuesday’s gunfights in the area between two groups armed with assault rifles and grenade launchers. (October 29, 2025, Basilan Province, Bangsamoro Region)