Hundreds of civilians hoping to flee fighting in the besieged Philippines city of Marawi remained trapped on Sunday after a four-hour ceasefire to evacuate residents was marred by gunfire.

Authorities said they had finally been able to negotiate a truce with fighters linked to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS), but continued clashes throughout the morning meant it was not put into place as expected.

At least 134 people are believed to have been rescued.

READ MORE: Dozens flee 'ISIL gunmen' in besieged Philippine city

President Rodrigo Duterte had asked the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), a separatist movement based on the island of Mindanao, to help negotiate a peace settlement with the fighters, who are predominantly drawn from the Maute group based in and around Marawi.

Maute is named after its leaders, the Maute brothers, who are cousins of the second wife of Alim Abdulaziz Mimbantas, a MILF leader. The government signed a peace deal with the MILF in 2014.





MILF cadres organised Sunday's ceasefire, which was to run from 8am until noon. They roamed the streets with loudhailers urging residents to leave.

But by 9am, gunfire had broken out, deterring residents from joining a mass exodus.

Local authorities said government officials, working through intermediaries, had reached agreement with the fighters to observe the four-hour ceasefire and let the trapped civilians leave.



But the officials failed to secure agreement from their own military for the truce, provincial crisis management committee spokesman Zia Alonto Adiong told the AFP news agency.



He said the military only allowed rescuers to access areas on the fringes of zones held by the fighters, and barred them from entering bombed-out city blocks.



As a result only some 170-plus trapped residents were led to safety on Sunday, according to the military. Speaking to the Reuters news agency, a presidential spokesman put the number of those who were evacuated at 134.



"We felt a bit disappointed and betrayed. We're talking about lives of people, my God!" Adiong said.



"There are 2,000 people who need immediate help (after) 13 days without food."

The battle for Marawi, a city on Mindanao island, began almost two weeks ago and prompted Duterte to declare martial law in the southern region.

Authorities lifted the civilian death toll from 20 to 38 on Sunday - but said all those deaths were caused by the separatist fighters.

A presidential spokesman said 120 fighters had died, along with 38 government forces.

Government forces have bombarded Marawi with air raids and waged fierce street-to-street battles with hundreds of gunmen since they rampaged through the Muslim city of 200,000 on May 23 after the military attempted to arrest their leader, Isnilon Hapilon.

READ MORE: Mindanao crisis - A city on fire

Scores of people made a daring dash for safety on Saturday, including one of Marawi's most respected politicians who had hidden 71 Christians in his home and led 144 people through downtown streets strewn with rotting corpses.

Many residents told Reuters that the air raids caused extensive property damage and dozens of civilian deaths.

Duterte said the use of air power had been restrained so far.

"I can end this war in 24 hours," he said. "All I have to do is to bomb the whole place and level it to the ground."</s>THOUSANDS of civilians hoping to flee fighting in the besieged Philippines city of Marawi remained trapped on Sunday after a four-hour ceasefire to evacuate residents was marred by gunfire.

Only 134 were freed on Sunday, less than on previous days, despite government hopes that more than 1,000 would be able to leave a city battered by 13 days of intense fighting.

Philippines president Rodrigo Duterte predicted the siege would be over within days despite fierce resistance by fighters aligned to Islamic State in the dense urban heart of the southern Philippines city.

“This will be over in about three more days,” Duterte said on Saturday after visiting a hospital in Cagayan de Oro where wounded soldiers were being treated.

“I will not hesitate to use every power available.”

SEE ALSO: Philippines general in charge of Marawi siege stood down

About 400 local militants reinforced by about 40 foreign fighters stormed Marawi on May 23, using sophisticated battlefield tactics to take control of large swaths of the lakeside city.

They have been pushed back to the city centre by Philippines forces over the past week after some 4,000 ground troops were bolstered by helicopters and aircraft deploying rockets and bombs.

Many residents have told Reuters that the airstrikes caused extensive property damage and dozens of civilian deaths. Authorities lifted the civilian death toll from 20 to 38 on Sunday – but said all those deaths were caused by militants.

A presidential spokesman said 120 militants had died, along with 38 government forces.

SEE ALSO: Indonesian security forces preparing against IS infiltration in wake of Marawi

Duterte said the use of air power had been restrained so far.

“I can end this war in 24 hours,” he said. “All I have to do is to bomb the whole place and level it to the ground.”

Duterte has asked the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), an Islamic separatist movement based on the Philippines island of Mindanao, to help negotiate a peace settlement with the Islamist fighters, who are predominantly drawn from the Maute Group based in and around Marawi.

Marawi, dubbed the “Islamic City of Marawi”, is also located on Mindanao, which has a large Muslim population in a predominantly Catholic country and been destabilised by separatist insurgencies for decades.

MILF cadres organised Sunday’s ceasefire, which was to run from 8am until noon. They roamed the streets with loud hailers urging residents to leave.

SEE ALSO: Philippine military airstrike misses rebel target, kills 10 govt troops instead

But by 9am, gunfire had broken out, apparently deterring residents from joining a mass exodus.

Marawi City’s mayor Majul Gandamra, told reporters on Sunday morning he was expecting “more or less 1,000 plus to be rescued today”. In the end, 134 were evacuated, less than previous days when there were no ceasefires. About 2,000 civilians remain in the city.

Irene Santiago, appointed by Duterte to organise the “peace corridor”, said the effort had been a success, noting the fighting was several kilometres away from where the evacuation took place.

She said negotiations were continuing with the Maute for another temporary ceasefire on Monday. – Reuters</s>Philippine authorities said Sunday they were trying to negotiate a ceasefire in a war-torn southern city to rescue up to 2,000 civilians trapped in areas held by Islamist militants for nearly two weeks.

Government forces have bombarded Marawi with air strikes and waged fierce street-to-street battles with hundreds of gunmen since they began a rampage through residential areas waving the black flags of the Islamic State (IS).

Authorities said Sunday they had finally been able to negotiate a ceasefire with the militants to allow those trapped to be released, although continued fighting throughout the morning meant it was not put into place as hoped.

"There are 2,000 people who need immediate help (after) 13 days without food," Zia Alonto Adiong, spokesman for the provincial crisis management committee, told AFP.

"We do not know if the ceasefire has been breached," he said, adding that a sudden surge in fighting had hampered the rescue efforts.

Scores of people made a daring dash for safety on Saturday, including one of Marawi's most respected politicians who had hidden 71 Christians in his home and led 144 people through downtown streets strewn with rotting corpses.

The militants behind the violence in Marawi mostly belong to a local group called the Maute and the infamous Abu Sayyaf kidnap-for-ransom gang which had pledged allegiance to IS and rejected official peace talks.

Sunday's ceasefire was initially reached following a meeting last week between President Rodrigo Duterte and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), the nation's biggest rebel organisation which offered to broker a halt in hostilities using contacts with the fighters in Marawi, Adiong told DZBB radio.

Unarmed MILF rebels had a four-hour window until noon (0400 GMT) to take civilians to safety, government rescue coordinator Naguib Sinarimbo said.

But an AFP reporter said there was a sudden burst of gunfire and an explosion as rescue teams were entering the city.

A Muslim separatist rebellion in the southern Philippines has killed more than 120,000 people since the 1970s.

The MILF has signed accords with the government aimed at forging lasting peace, giving up their separatist ambitions in return for autonomy.

But small hardline groups, including the Maute and Abu Sayyaf, have refused to negotiate and sought to united behind IS.

The clashes in Marawi erupted when security forces raided a house to arrest Isnilon Hapilon, a veteran Filipino militant regarded as IS's leader in the Philippines. He is on the US government's list of most-wanted terrorists.

Authorities said they were taken by surprise when many gunmen emerged to protect Hapilon and then went on a rampage through Marawi, which has a population of 200,000.

Shortly after the violence erupted Duterte imposed martial law across the southern region of Mindanao, home to 20 million people, to quell what he said was an IS bid to establish a base in the mainly Catholic Philippines.</s>MARAWI CITY – At least 134 trapped civilians were rescued when military and the Islamic State-inspired gunmen observed a four-hour humanitarian ceasefire on the 13th day of hostilities here.

Armed with megaphones, five teams composed of Moro Islamic Liberation Front members, went out to the war zone areas calling for trapped civilians to come out of their hiding places.

“We are able to retrieve 134 children, men, women, elderly and the sick,” Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process assistance secretary Dickson Hermoso told reporters.

He said the ceasefire happened after an emissary helped negotiate with the militants on Saturday.

But one team was not able to do its task as fighting erupted in one part of Barangay Banggolo at 9:30 a.m. Sunday.

Mayor Majul Gandamra said they did not know who fired first.

Agakhan Shareif, a civil society group leader in Marawi and one those involved in the rescue efforts, said they were nearing Barangay Banggolo, where they will fetch trapped civilians, when exchange of gunfire erupted.

“May mga snipers (There are snipers),” he said.

Regional Assemblyman Zia Alonto Adiong, the acting spokesperson of the provincial government, had directed the rescue team to proceed to the capitol for safety.

The other teams, however, were able to rescue 134 trapped civilians.

Hermoso said the government’s emissary negotiated directly with Abduallah Maute, one of the leaders of the armed men.

He said there was no condition set by Maute for the peace corridor to take effect.

“We don’t know what prompted Abdullah to make such move, but maybe for humanitarian reason,” he said.

“Again, we request both sides to open a humanitarian space so that we can get all those trapped civilians in the war zone,” he added.

Government peace panel chair Irene Santiago said members of the MILF ceasefire committee participated in the effort to rescue trapped civilians.

President Duterte last week approved the creation of peace corridor amid the crisis.

“The peace corridor was going to be a way, a safe passage of peace and relief goods. This is jointly implemented by implementing panels of the government of the Philippines and the MILF,” Santiago said.

“We opened that peace corridor and you can see that we were able to accomplish so much in so little time,” she added.

Santiago said Sunday’s peace corridor covered the area from Banggulo bridge up to Quezon Avenue of Marawi, which is about three kilometers.

But Santiago explained that the government was not negotiating with the terrorists.

“We did not offer anything to them. When you are negotiating, you try not to offer anything. And that’s exactly what we did,” she said.

She said around 1,000 to 2,000 civilians are still trapped in the war zone.

“After what happened today, we are still optimistic that we can do it again,” she said.

As of June 2, the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao’s Humanitarian Emergency Action and Response Team (ARMM-Heart) has recorded a total of 221,275 internally displaced persons. Of the total number, 58,160 persons are in evacuation centers while 163,115 are staying with relatives outside Marawi.

At 2 p.m. Sunday, or two hours after the ceasefire expired, fighting continued, with government planes dropping bombs on suspected locations of militants. –Richel V. Umel and Jeoffrey Maitem with a report from Edwin O. Fernandez, Inquirer Mindanao</s>MARAWI CITY, Philippines, June 4 (Reuters) - Thousands of civilians hoping to flee fighting in the besieged Philippines city of Marawi remained trapped on Sunday after a four-hour truce to evacuate residents was disrupted by gunfire.

Only 134 were freed on Sunday, less than on previous days, despite government hopes that more than 1,000 would be able to leave a city battered by 13 days of intense fighting.

President Rodrigo Duterte predicted the siege would be over within days despite fierce resistance by militants aligned with Islamic State (IS) in the dense urban heart of the city on the southern island of Mindanao.

"This will be over in about three more days," Duterte said on Saturday after visiting a hospital in Cagayan de Oro where wounded soldiers were being treated. "I will not hesitate to use every power available."

About 400 local militants reinforced by about 40 foreign fighters stormed Marawi on May 23, using sophisticated battlefield tactics to seize large swathes of the lakeside city.

They have been pushed back to the city centre by Philippines forces over the past week after around 4,000 ground troops moved in, bolstered by helicopters and aircraft deploying rockets and bombs.

Many residents have told Reuters that the air strikes caused extensive property damage and dozens of civilian deaths. Authorities raised the civilian death toll from 20 to 38 on Sunday - but said all those deaths were caused by militants.

A presidential spokesman said 120 militants had died, along with 38 government forces. Duterte said the use of air power had been restrained so far.

"I can end this war in 24 hours," he said. "All I have to do is to bomb the whole place and level it to the ground."

Duterte has asked the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), an Islamic separatist movement based on Mindanao, to help negotiate a peace deal with the militants, who are predominantly drawn from the Maute Group based in and around Marawi.

While touring a Japanese warship docked at a former U.S. navy base on Sunday, Duterte said he had accepted the offer of a second Muslim guerrilla group, the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), which signed a peace deal with Manila in 1996, to send 2,000 fighters to battle the IS-linked militants.

Mindanao has a large Muslim population in an otherwise predominantly Roman Catholic country and has been destabilised by separatist insurgencies for decades.

MILF cadres organised Sunday's ceasefire, which was to run from 8 a.m. until noon local time. They roamed the streets with loudspeakers urging residents to leave.

But by 9 a.m., gunfire had broken out, apparently deterring residents from joining a mass exodus.

Marawi City Mayor Majul Gandamra told reporters on Sunday morning he was expecting "more or less 1,000 plus to be rescued today". In the end, 134 were evacuated, less than previous days when there were no ceasefires. About 2,000 civilians remain in the city.

Irene Santiago, appointed by Duterte to organise the "peace corridor", said the effort had been a success as the fighting was several km (miles) away from where the evacuation occurred.

She said negotiations were continuing with the Maute for another temporary ceasefire on Monday. (Reporting by Tom Allard and Karen Lema; Editing by Mark Heinrich)</s>Efforts to evacuate the last few thousand civilians trapped in the southern Philippines city of Marawi proved futile today, as the four-hour ceasefire meant to provide an opening for them to get out quickly collapsed in the face of gunfire.

Marawi was captured last month by the local ISIS affiliate, and the region placed under martial law by the Duterte government, which has promised to recapture it militarily. Duterte appeared dismissive of the ceasefire’s failure, insisting he was confident they’d conquer the city within three days anyhow.

Locals are complaining, however, that a growing number of civilians are being killed in the airstrikes against the city. The Philippines government appeared to admit to the rising civilian toll, though they insisted everyone killed was the “fault” of the militants.

Duterte also appeared dismissive of the concerns about civilian deaths, unsurprising given how much killing has been going on in the country since he took office. Duterte insisted that the “fastest” way to retake the city would be to just level the entire area, killing all within, presenting anyhing short of that as restraint on his part.
• Growing Evidence of Summary Executions by Iraqi Forces in Mosul - June 4th, 2017</s>(UPDATED) The military declares a unilateral ceasefire from 8 am to noon on Sunday, June 4, to allow humanitarian workers to save residents trapped inside the combat zone

ILIGAN CITY, Philippines (UPDATED) – A total of 134 trapped residents were rescued on Sunday, June 4, after the military declared a 4-hour unilateral humanitarian ceasefire in Marawi City.

"It was a highly tense half-day until we got some trapped civilians out and our MILF rescue teams returned. No mishaps, thank God. The peace corridor enabled 134 people to come out safely," said Irene Santiago, chairperson of the government peace panel, on her Facebook page.

The unilateral declaration was arranged by panels of the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) that are implementing a peace agreement signed under the previous administration. (READ: Duterte creates 'peace corridors' with MILF for Marawi residents)

"It is a period coordinated with our forces, approved by the chief of staff, providing for a 4-hour window to allow entry of humanitarian workers from the local government units, non-government organizations, and civil society organizations," said military spokesperson Brigadier General Restituto Padilla.

"It's a humanitarian pause," he added. The ceasefire started at 8 am and ended at noon.

The MILF is the country's dominant Muslim rebel group. Central Mindanao, where Marawi City is located, is the MILF's known bailiwick.

Rappler spotted representatives of the government and MILF panels at the Lanao del Sur provincial capitol in Marawi City the night of May 31 to arrange logistics for the peace corridor.

Padilla said gunshots were reported during the ceasefire, however. – Rappler.com
Citizens remain trapped in Marawi, Philippines, after a ceasefire organised by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) is broken. Up to 2,000 people remain in need of help after nearly two weeks without food.