Teachers from the Hadji Saripa Elementary School clean its premises in a cleaning program launched in Barangay Matampay in Marawi City on Wednesday. Its 185 students are now enrolled in other schools in northern Mindanao. (photo by froilan gallardo)
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By FROILAN GALLARDO
Special Correspondent

MARAWI City — Hundreds of volunteers turned up on Wednesday to clean a village here of debris, Isis graffiti and filth from the four months of fighting that devastated this city.

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Marawi Mayor Majul Usman Gamdamra said the ongoing clean-up is in preparation for the return of almost 200,000 residents who fled in May.

“We want to erase any traces of the fighting. We want the residents to come home to a city  that is clean,” Gandamra said.

He said the “Brigada Marawi” they initiated, will also clean six other barangays in the western portion of the city that is already considered cleared by the military and police.

The volunteers swarmed on the streets of Barangay Matampay clearing the streets of old tires, blocks of wood and other debris — not before Army officers warned them not to touch boxes and not to enter houses and buildings.

Just the day before, Col. Romeo Brawner, deputy commander of Task Force Ranao, said a total of  nine crude bombs and 18 blasting caps  were found in one of the houses in Barangay Matampay.

“It was ready to go. We had to destroy it immediately,” Brawner said.

Teacher Casema Sone was elated that she finally was able to see her house in Barangay Matampay after more than four months.

Her happiness was however cut short when military soldiers told her she can’t go inside or approach her two-storey wooden house because they have yet to clear it.

“I do not know if my refrigerator, sala set and the clothes of children are still there,” Sone said as she looked into her house from the roadside.

Another school teacher, Cairon Bula led her fellow teachers in cleaning up the entrance of their school Hadji Saripa Elementary School.

They, too, could not enter their school because the military warned them about crude bombs left behind by the Isis-Maute gunmen.

Brawner said the soldiers have cleared Barangay Matampay of gunmen in June but have yet to clear the school and houses of  explosives that may have been left behind.

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