JOLO ISLAND (Mindanao Examiner / 09 Oct) - Six government soldiers were wounded in fierce clashes with Abu Sayyaf militants in the southern Philippine island of Jolo, officials said.
Officials said a still undetermined number of gunmen were killed and wounded in the weekend fighting in Mt Tunggol in Patikul town, where security forces raided a terrorist hideout.
"Six of our soldiers are wounded and we still don't know how many terrorists were killed and wounded in the clash," a regional army spokesman, Major Eugenio Batara, told the Mindanao Examiner on Monday.
Batara described the one-hour battle as "ferocious" and said army troops clashed with the group of local Abu Sayyaf leader Radullan Sahiron, wanted by the Philippines for his role in the spate of kidnappings of foreigners and terrorism in the restive region.
"The fighting was ferocious and military intelligence reports suggested many casualties on the side of the terrorist groups," he said.
Batara did not say whether two Jemaah Islamiya militants Dulmatin and Umar Patek, wanted by Jakarta for the 2002 Bali nightclubs bombings, had fought the soldiers side by side with Sahiron's group.
"The continuing operations of the Armed Forces of the Philippines against the Abu Sayyaf and Jemaah Islamiyah led to the encounter. The government will continue operations until the terrorist ASG and JI are neutralized," he said.
Batara said troops earlier captured an Abu Sayyaf hideout in Patikul's Mt Bagsak and recovered empty boxes of mortar and rifle ammunition, surgical blades, disposable syringe and empty cases of gauze pad with plaster and other medical paraphernalia.
"The terrorists could be running out of food and medical supplies because of the government offensive. We will choke them until they are cornered in Patikul," he said.
Security forces last week arrested the Indonesian wife of wanted Jemaah Islamiya bomber, Dulmatin, in a raid at terrorist hideout in Patikul.
Lieutenant Colonel Bartolome Bacarro said, spokesman of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, said Istiada Bt. H. Oemar Sovie, alias Amenah Toha, and her two children were detained by soldiers. The woman is being investigated whether she had a role in Dulmatin's terror activities.
Bacarro said the woman admitted to military interrogators that she is the wife of the 37-year old Dulmatin, also known as Amar Bin Usman, one of Asia’s most wanted Jemaah Islamiya leaders
Dulmatin’s wife also said that she sneaked by boat to the southern Philippine island of Tawi-Tawi from Malaysia in August 2003 and was fetched by Azhar, a Jemaah Islamiya militant, and brought to Jolo island to join the group of the wanted terror leader and the Abu Sayyaf.
The Jemaah Islamiya is also believed as behind the 2004 bombing of a Filipino ferry off Manila Bay that killed 116 people-the second-worst terrorist attack in Southeast Asia after the 2002 Bali bombs.
The group was largely blamed by Philippine authorities in a series of bombings in Manila in December 2000 that killed 22 and wounded more than 100 people. One of the bombs exploded at an open square less than a hundred meters from the U.S. Embassy.
The U.S. has offered a $10 million bounty for the capture of Dulmatin, an electronics specialist with training in al-Qa'eda camps in Afghanistan. He is a senior figure in the Jemaah Islamiya terrorist organization and is believed to have been one of the masterminds behind the bombings of two night clubs in Bali, which killed 202 people, mostly Australians, including seven U.S. citizens.
Dulmatin fled to Mindanao in the southern Philippines soon after the August 2003 bombing of the JW Marriott hotel in Jakarta. There, he is one of four top JI leaders—including Umar Patek, Zulkifli bin Hir and Abdul Rahman Ayub—who trained members of JI and the Abu Sayyaf group in Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) camps in the Philippines, said Zachary Abusa, an Asian terror expert.
In 2005, Dulmatin and Umar Patek ordered Abdullah Sonata, a JI operative in Central Java who was arrested in conjunction with the September 4, 2004 Australian Embassy bombing, to dispatch additional JI members to Mindanao for training. He has also called for JI suicide bombers to be sent to the Philippines for operations.
Abusa said Dulmatin, along with Zulkarnaen and Abu Rusdan, was designated for involvement in terrorism by the U.S. Department of the Treasury in April, and placed on the UN's 1267 Committee for terrorist financing in early 2005.
The MILF has denied any ties with the Jemaah Islamiya. (Mindanao Examiner)
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