![]() "Our city is in ruins, all the people have gone and the stores are closed. ![]() "I don't know how we can re-start our lives after the fighting," Ampao said by telephone. She has been living with other evacuees in a nearby government building that has been turned into an emergency shelter. Villager Janisah Ampao, who fled her home with her husband and two children when the fighting broke out last month, felt a sense of relief and pride when she saw the flag being raised at the provincial capital building. Marawi Mayor Majul Gandamra fought back tears as he thanked troops, police and volunteers in the crisis that has turned parts of the previously tranquil lakeside city of more than 200,000 people, most of whom have fled the fighting, into a smouldering battlefield. ![]() Policemen roamed a community that troops had wrested back from the militants and festooned abandoned houses with small flags. While the flag-raising was mainly to mark Independence Day, it also symbolized the reclaiming of city hall and other areas of Marawi by government forces. Many were teary-eyed during the flag-raising ceremonies at the heavily guarded city hall and provincial capital building in Marawi, the heartland of the Islamic faith in the country's south, where hundreds of gunmen went on a deadly rampage on May 23.īlasts from airstrikes thudded in the distance during the events. MARAWI, Philippines - Filipinos marked their country's Independence Day by raising the national flag Monday in a southern city where troops pressed assaults to quell a three-week siege by Islamic State group-aligned militants that has left 270 combatants and civilians dead.
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