KORONADAL CITY (July 13, 2026) — Two Army divisions in Mindanao have dispatched more soldiers to the tremor-stricken South Cotabato and Sarangani provinces and in General Santos to support the disaster impact mitigation efforts of local government units in the three areas, officials said on Friday, June 12.
Additional personnel of the 105th Infantry Battalion of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division and the 12th Forward Service Support Unit, which is based in Camp Siongco in Datu Odin Sinsuat town in Maguindanao del Norte, where the 6th ID’s headquarters is located, are supporting multi-sector, inter-agency public service operations in South Cotabato and Sarangani provinces and in General Santos City.
Appreciation
South Cotabato Gov. Reynaldo Tamayo, Jr., chairperson of the Regional Peace and Order Council (RPOC) 12, told reporters on Friday that he and members of the multi-sector council appreciate the prompt dispatch to the three areas of rescuer-soldiers by 6th ID’s commander, Major Gen. Jose Vladimir Cagara.
Soldiers from the 10th ID have also been helping the LGU of General Santos City address humanitarian concerns besetting all of its barangays, worst hit by Monday’s 7.8 Magnitude earthquake that displaced no fewer than 300,000 families in the area and in towns in South Cotabato and Sarangani provinces.
Major Gen. Alvin Luzon, commander of the Army’s 10th Infantry Division, and his subordinate-officers in their anti-terror Task Force GenSan are also directly supporting the relief operations in General Santos City of local executives, according to Tamayo, speaking as RPOC 12 chairperson.
“We are very grateful to both the 6th ID and the 10th ID for helping the communities in Region 12 bounce back from this disaster,” Tamayo said.
“We also appreciate so much the efforts of the Police Regional Office 12 and the Bureau of Fire Protection 12, also both actively helping local government units in tremor-affected areas address humanitarian concerns besetting the local communities,” Tamayo said.
Medical care for tremor victims
Local executives in South Cotabato province are together extending extensive medical care, since before dawn Tuesday, to 334 constituents who sustained injuries, many of them still unsafe, caused by the 7.8 Magnitude tremor that jolted Central Mindanao on Monday, June 8.
South Cotabato, whose territory covers 10 municipalities and Koronadal City, is one of the four provinces in Region 12, whose center is less than an hour away from General Santos City via overland travel.
Up to 513 buildings and other infrastructures in General Santos City, in the provinces of Sarangani and South Cotabato and in its provincial capital, Koronadal City were damaged by Monday’s earthquake, according to official reports by local government units in the four areas.
The earthquake also affected the adjoining southern Regions 9, 10, 12 and the entire Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.
Officials of the Office of Civil Defense 12, the BFP 12 and the PRO 12 separately told reporters that in Central Mindanao’s adjoining South Cotabato-Cotabato-Sultan Kudarat-Sarangani-General Santos City (Soccsksargen) area alone, 35 residents died as a result of Monday’s earthquake, based on reports, as of late Wednesday, by emergency responders in the field.
Officials also clarified that 20 of the fatalities in the region are residents of Glan and Malapatan towns in Sarangani. The epicenter of Monday’s earthquake that hit the Soccsksargen area is in the seaside Maasim town in Sarangani.
Officials also confirmed on Thursday that 647 individuals in Soccsksargen were hurt during and after the two-minute earthquake, hit by debris from damaged buildings and other structures that collapsed then.
South Cotabato affected too
Rolly Aquino, chief of South Cotabato’s Provincial Disaster Risk Reduction and Management office, told reporters on Thursday that, based on reports by the local government units in the 10 towns and in Koronadal City that are under their jurisdiction, Monday’s earthquake left 334 residents in the province injured.
Tamayo and his constituent-mayors are together attending to the needs of the 334 injured villagers from across the province.
“The office of our governor had also extended initial assistance to the families of the three residents of the province who died as a result of last Monday’s powerful earthquake,” Aquino, a registered nurse, said.
Aquino said their field emergency response teams, backed by policemen and soldiers, are still searching for an ethnic T’boli villager underneath the tons of soil and rocks, loosened by the earthquake and cascaded from a hillside towards a flatland in T’boli town.
Tamayo had told reporters that, as of Thursday, engineers under his office and in the local government units in the province placed at P365 million their estimate of the cost of the buildings and other structures in their province that the earthquake destroyed.
Photo shows soldiers from the 6th ID sifting through a spot, somewhere in Sarangani province, where tons of soil that cascaded from a hill, loosened by strong tremor last Monday, crashed. []