Davao residents are bracing for a long weekend after Malacañang declared August 18 a non-working holiday.
Army Capt. Jo-ann Petinglay, talks to doctors and nurses of Amai Pakpak Medical Center in Marawi City on Tuesday, Aug 1. The hospital workers are divided into five groups and will go on duty for three-day shifting to attend to patients, mostly evacuees, who are confined in the hospital as the ongoing military operations against the Daesh-inspired Maute group enters in its third month Tuesday, Aug. 1. (Divina M. Suson/davaotoday.com)
Children spend time playing in a covered court turned evacuation center in the town of Saguiaran, Lanao del Sur on Friday, July 28, 2017. They are the children of the 370 families staying inside the evacuation center for more than two months now. (Paulo C. Rizal/davaotoday.com)
In the second wave of the National Interfaith Humanitarian Mission (NHIM), ?the ?internally displaced persons from Marawi City have opened to facilitators on their experience as the conflict there has stretched for more than two months, said a civil society organizer.
When the fighting broke ?out ?two months ago, many of Marawi’s residents refused to give up their homes, certain that the military would be able to handle the Maute --- a previously small, ragtag band of extremists who pledged allegiance to the ISIS by occupying an abandoned municipal hall in nearby Butig town.