A displaced resident holds a supply of sardines at an evacuation center in Balo-i township, Lanao del Norte province. Tens of thousands of residents are now housed in different evacuation centers as government troops continue to fight Muslim militants in Marawi City.
AP
Tagbilaran City, Bohol — Two days before the clashes in Marawi broke out, a 20-year-old welder from here was on board his motorcycle in Marawi City to look for food when a man approached him and asked him a question in an unfamiliar language.
When John (not his real name) told the man he didn’t understand, the man shot him many times on his leg, shoulder and hand using a 9mm pistol.
The man then boarded John’s motorcycle and fled.
John, who is still recuperating at the Governor Celestino Gallares Memorial Hospital (GCGMH) here, promised himself never to go back to Marawi City again.
“I won’t come back there anymore,” a hospital staff quoted him as saying.
John, who asked not to be identified, told the Inquirer he left his village of Guinsularan, Duero town in Bohol province to find a job in Marawi City as a welder.
But the dream turned into a nightmare on May 21 when he was shot by an unidentified man simply because he failed to answer his question.
After the man fled on his motorcycle, John was brought to the Amay PakPak Hospital in Marawi City for treatment.
But two days later, while still recuperating inside the Amay PakPak hospital, he saw how terrorists belonging to the Maute terror group overran the hospital to bring in their members wounded in a shootout with government troops.
John said he saw Maute members kill several ambulance drivers after the physicians failed to save their wounded comrade.
After the soldiers took over the hospital, John and the other patients were first brought to a military camp in Marawi before they were brought to a hospital in Iligan City, an hour away. From Iligan, he was brought back to Tagbilaran and was confined at the GCGMH.
President Rodrigo Duterte has placed the entire Mindanao under martial law following the firefight between military forces and the Maute terror group, a small band of ISIS-inspired terrorists in Lanao del Sur which the government failed to crush.
The death toll from eight days of fighting in Marawi has reached almost 100.