Wanted top BIFF leader killed in Maguindanao del Norte shootout

July 5, 2026 | 5:58pm

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — The top leader of a faction in the now-defunct Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters, with a P3 million reward on his head, was killed in a clash with soldiers and policemen in Sultan Kudarat, Maguindanao del Norte, before dawn Sunday, July 5.

The slain Esmael Abubakar, most known in Central Mindanao as “Bongos,” and his followers, many of them experts in the fabrication of improvised explosives that can be detonated from a distance using mobile phones, originally operated in the adjoining Shariff Aguak, Shariff Saidona Mustapha, Datu Saudi Ampatuan and Datu Salibo and Mamasapano towns in Maguindanao del Sur.

Major Gen. Jose Vladimir Cagara, commander of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division, and Brig. Gen. Edgar Catu of the 601st Infantry Brigade, separately told reporters on Sunday morning that the operation that resulted in the death of Abubakar was premised on reports by residents in Maguindanao del Sur about his recent relocation to Sultan Kudarat, Maguindanao del Norte after more than a hundred of his followers had pledged allegiance to the government, in batches, since January.

Soldiers from the 6th ID and the 601st Infantry Brigade, operatives from the Maguindanao del Sur Provincial Police Office, led by their director, Col. Michael John Mangahis, and officials of intelligence units of PRO-BAR, were to peacefully serve Abubakar five separate warrants of arrest at his hideout in Sitio Tambak in Barangay Calsada but he pulled out a gun and opened fire, provoking a gunfight the resulted in his death.

The warrants for his arrest were issued by the Regional Trial Court Branches 14 and 15 in Cotabato City, where he is wanted for high-profile cases, including multiple murder, multiple frustrated murder and destructive arson.

Local executives in Maguindanao del Sur, one of the five provinces in the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, among them ranking members of the multi-sector peace and order council in the province, told reporters that a group of Moro traders had also separately filed extortion cases against Abubakar, widely known for his coddling of large-scale shabu and marijuana traffickers in exchange for money.

The anti-terror operation in Sitio Tambak in Sultan Kudarat that sparked a gunfight that left Abubakar dead was assisted by policemen from the Sultan Kudarat Municipal Police Station, led by Lt. Col Esmael Madin, and the Maguindanao del Norte Provincial Police Office, whose headquarters are in Simuay area in the municipality.

Abubakar was declared dead on arrival by physicians at the Cotabato Sanitarium General Hospital in Barangay Pinaring in Sultan Kudarat, where Madin and his subordinate-policemen brought him to treatment.

Cagara had, after the incident, urged via their Division Public Affairs Office the remaining followers of Abubakar and all remnants of other BIFF factions to avail now of their regional reconciliation program for violent religious extremists for them to be jointly reintegrated to mainstream society by the 6th ID and the Bangsamoro regional government, whose capitol is in Cotabato City, only about five kilometers from Sultan Kudarat, one of the 12 towns in Maguindanao del Norte.