MANILA (Reuters) – The war in the Philippine city of Marawi saw Islamist insurgents execute civilians or use them as human shields, while military air strikes killed non-combatants and may have been used in excess, an Amnesty International report said on Friday.

The investigation by the rights group on the bloody five-month battle was based on interviews with 48 witnesses from September until early November and called for an independent inquiry.

The conflict in Marawi, the only predominantly Muslim city in the mainly Catholic Philippines, was the country’s biggest and longest battle since World War Two. More than 1,100 people, mostly insurgents, were killed, including 166 soldiers and 47 civilians, according to the authorities.

At least 350,000 people were displaced and large parts of Marawi have been decimated by air strikes.

Witnesses described at least 10 separate incidents where at least 25 people were executed by the Muslim extremists because they were Christians. Amnesty described those as war crimes.

It also said 10 hostages may have been killed in a single bombing run by the armed forces, and said an independent inquiry should include an assessment as to whether the air strikes were proportionate to the threat.

“They must initiate a prompt, effective and impartial investigation into whether its bombings of civilian neighborhoods was proportional under international humanitarian law,” Tirana Hassan, Amnesty International’s crisis response director, said in a statement.

“The Philippine authorities must bring those responsible for torture and other violations to justice and ensure that the victims receive adequate reparations.”

Major-General Restituto Padilla, armed forces spokesman, said the military was aware of the report and would respond in full later. He said troops were given strict instructions to observe and respect international humanitarian law and human rights.

“We will not tolerate and condone these abuses and will act on them,” he told a regular news briefing on Friday.

The 34-page report, “The Battle of Marawi: Death and destruction in the Philippines”, quotes a survivor who said he was spared by rebels because he could recite the “shahada”, a statement of Islamic faith, but a Christian ambulance driver was shot dead because he could not do the same.

Other survivors said hostages were executed or physically abused, forced into labor and used as human shields.

Some hostages who escaped alleged they were detained and tortured by security forces who suspected them to be militants. Amnesty said it talked to eight men, including seven Christians, who said they were badly treated by the authorities.

“I was punched and kicked. They tied our hands and feet with electrical wire,” the report quoted one survivor as saying. “The military was angry because 13 of their men were killed.”

Last month, U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis praised the Philippine military for ending the war without a single credible human rights abuse allegation.

Amnesty noted that the military was responding to concerns about looting by soldiers but “must follow through on promises of compensation”.

(Reporting by Manuel Mogato; Editing by Martin Petty and Michael Perry)

By Martin Petty

MARAWI CITY, Philippines (Reuters) – Prayer mats, chequered scarves, black fatigues, and bullet-ridden walls mark the hideout where the “emir” of Islamic State in Southeast Asia spent months preparing the most brazen and devastating militant attack in the region.

A four-storey house in a quiet alley of Marawi City in the southern Philippines was the secret lair of Isnilon Hapilon until late May. After a botched military raid to apprehend him, a thousand-strong rebel alliance held large parts of the city for five months.

Hapilon’s death in a military operation elsewhere in Marawi on Oct. 16 was the catalyst for the end of Philippines’ longest and most intense urban battle in recent history. [L4N1MY257]

Security forces moved in on the house on May 23, trying to capture the country’s most wanted man, but came under sustained attack from rebels firing rocket-propelled grenades.

A bomb-battered structure, shattered windows and wall-to-wall holes from machine gun fire tell the story of the ferocious three-day battle that erupted at Hapilon’s hideout, and prompted the call to hundreds of fighters to expedite the planned takeover of Marawi.

Hapilon escaped through a large hole that was blasted out of a rear wall, making his way across a rice field to a mosque next to the vast Lake Lanao. From there, he joined the guerrillas who held the heart of the city for the next five months.

Community volunteers on Thursday showed Reuters the house in the now empty, narrow street where the military believes Hapilon had lain low for several months. All other properties were intact and neighbors had fled long ago.

“At the time, no one knew who these people were, people saw them about but there was no reason to suspect anything,” said Mohammed Seddick Raki, who lived nearby.

Other volunteers said women and children stayed at the rented house and visitors were frequent.

Children’s’ shoes were scattered amid the debris and a woman’s robe was hanging from a window.

BATTLE READY

Inside the house, black shirts, pants and plaid scarves synonymous with Islamic State were strewn across rooms littered with broken floor tiles and chunks of rock from blasted walls.

Left behind were waterproof boots, a balaclava, medical supplies and camouflage bags and waistcoats typically used by soldiers to carry rifle magazines.

Coated in a think layer of dust on floors of every room were pocket-sized copies of the Koran, some with pages stained by water leaked through gaping holes in the roof.

The deputy task force commander in Marawi, Colonel Romeo Brawner, said Hapilon evaded security forces because rebels had a network of lookouts and gunmen ready to defend him.

“They put up heavy resistance, they were spread across a large area. They were strategically placed,” he said. “They were prepared for it.”

Hapilon’s escape in the last week of May led to anarchy in the city of about 200,000. Rebels took hostages, set fire to buildings, ransacked churches, broke into the local jail to free inmates and looted an armory.

The government had insufficient security forces in Marawi to prevent the fighters from fanning out across the city and seizing hundreds of buildings.

Hapilon was wanted by the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and had a bounty on his head of up to $5 million. He was killed by army rangers in a night operation and his body was retrieved from the battle zone in the heart of the city and his identity confirmed by the FBI’s DNA analysis.

In five months of intense urban battle, the heart of Marawi was all but destroyed by government air strikes and shelling that leveled commercial areas and crushed thousands of shops, homes and vehicles.

“No one could have known what would happen,” said Mohamed Faisal Mama, a resident in the same Basak Malutlot district where Hapilon was hiding.

“No one knew them. They weren’t famous then.”

(Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)

MARAWI CITY, Philippines (Reuters) – After five months of crippling conflict, there are slow signs of life returning in the Philippines’ battered Marawi City.

Utilities engineers were at work on Thursday in the near-deserted outskirts of Marawi which escaped the daily air strikes that flattened vast swathes of the city.

A few groceries, motorcycle repair shops and gasoline sellers have opened, ready for the first batch of returning residents in the coming days.

Nearly 6,500 families will be headed back to the homes that were left intact, out of the 353,000 people displaced when hundreds of pro-Islamic State gunmen ran amok and seized control of central Marawi in May.

Combat operations ended on Monday, when the last fighters were killed in a fierce final stand. With vehicles crushed and overturned and buildings reduced to skeletons of mangled steel and rubble, the city appears to be in the aftermath of a war that lasted years, rather than months.

Amelah Ampaso said she decided that day to sneak back to Marawi and reopen her shop, now stocked with cooking oil and cigarettes and offering photocopying services, printing, and haircuts.

As a first-mover in a liberated Marawi, the 25-year-old is doing brisk business among the few people around.

“The other shops are closed, so people are coming here,” she said. “It’s safe again.”

But nearby streets look like the set of a post-apocalyptic film, silent, with shutters pulled down and weeds growing between concrete slabs. Rust and decay is setting in after months of heavy rains and neglect.

Spray painted on the walls of almost every building is the word “clear”, marking where police and soldiers went house-to-house checking thousands of abandoned properties for booby-traps or signs of insurgents hiding.

The fighting has taken a heavy toll, killing more than 1,100 people, mostly militants, and reducing a large part of the interior of the city to piles of rubble, leaving only shells of uninhabitable gray buildings.

Shop owner Madid Noor, 64, returned two months into the battle, reassured by detachments of soldiers and police nearby, and unperturbed by what were constant explosions and the howling of fighter jets over the city.

After a few lean months, he hopes returnees will come to him to buy washing powder, petrol and fake branded sportswear.

“Some days we have customers. But not every day,” he said.

(Reporting by Martin Petty; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)