The gunmen have mustered a force of about 200 fighters and fought a series of skirmishes with security forces this year after government forces retook Marawi last October, Colonel Romeo Brawner told Agence France-Presse.
“They have not abandoned their objective to create a caliphate in South-east Asia,” said Brawner, a senior commander for a military task force that has since been protecting Marawi.
“Mindanao is the most fertile ground,” he said, referring to the Philippine’s southern region. “Our countrymen are more vulnerable (to recruitment).”
Struggling with widespread poverty and armed Muslim insurgencies seeking independence or self-rule, Mindanao must improve its poor supervision of Islamic schools, where most young gunmen are recruited, he added.
He said the armed forces were retooling to meet the challenge of the Maute group, which occupied Marawi over five months and has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (IS).
Gunmen who escaped during the early days of the United States-backed operation to recapture Marawi are leading the recruitment effort, flush with cash, guns and jewellery looted from the city’s banks and private homes, Brawner said.
The recruits are mostly locals, but an unspecified number of Indonesians, some with bomb-making skills, have recently arrived there, he added.
Brawner told reporters that the rebuilt Maute forces currently “do not as yet have the capability to launch another attack like what they did in Marawi”, though he said this could change.
The siege of Marawi forced the Philippine military, more used to low-intensity jungle warfare against guerillas, to reorganise and to rewrite their doctrines, with a new emphasis on urban warfare training, he added.
Mindanao military officials said Maute gunmen murdered three traders in the town of Piagapo, near Marawi, last November. Last month, police arrested three suspects over the Piagapo killings.
The military also reported skirmishes with Maute gunmen in the towns of Masiu and Pagayawan, near Marawi last month. On Feb 8, the military killed three militants in Pantar, another neighbouring town.
The renewed fighting came after Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and other political leaders in the Mindanao region warned of a potential repeat of the siege of Marawi which claimed more than 1,100 lives. Duterte has imposed martial law in Mindanao until the end of the year in an effort to curb the militants’ activities.
Ebrahim Murad, head of the Philippines’ main Muslim rebel group Moro Islamic Liberation Front, which signed a peace treaty with Manila in 2014, also warned on Tuesday that militants were recruiting and could seize another city.