Up to 40% of Marawi destroyed due to clashes with ISIS-Maute

At least 30 percent to 40 percent of Marawi City has been destroyed due to the protracted clashes between government forces and the ISIS-influenced local terror group Maute which have been raging for more than a month now, the crisis management committee spokesman said on Friday.

Zia Alonto Adiong said the city center took the heaviest toll because of the fighting.

“Well, if you based that on the concentration of the fighting and the assault of the government, I guess 30 percent to 40 percent of Marawi City is damaged,” Adiong said in an interview on ANC.

“We are talking about the city center, we are talking about where the socio-economic life really is concentrated so we are talking about schools, we are talking about  private and civilian properties, we are taking about markets,” he added.

Adiong said the fighting had immensely affected the life of residents.

“The damage really is not only on infrastructure but also on the socioeconomic life of the people here in Marawi City. So the damage, I should say, is really tremendous,” Adiong said.

Adiong said there were some 246,000 individuals affected by the clashes and most of them are internally displaced persons.

“Some of them now are living in as far as Baguio, Manila, and Quezon City so it’s really hard to track them down,” Adiong said.

He said their main concern now is food for the residents staying at the evacuation centers especially with the end of Ramadan when they need to provide food three times a day.

“Number one is food, the immediate concern really is food . Here in the provincial capitol we’ve been feeding them each day," Adiong said.

"The provincial capitol has already allocated P7 million and in fact spent P8 million for the evacuees that were housed in the provincial capitol,” he added.

He added they are also feeding some of the IDPs especially in Basac area.

“These are the home-based IDPs, residents of Marawi city who fled the city and chose not to stay in the evacuation centers but rather to stay with their families and kin in nearby towns,” Adiong said.

“We are dealing with about a thousand families scattered around nearby towns. We also provide food as well as other basic necessities,” he added.

He said they are also dealing with a number of cases of health-related problems.

“So we are trying to deploy doctors in the area to provide medical assistance to the people,” Adiong said. —NB/KVD, GMA News