ZAMBOANGA CITY (Mindanao Examiner / 20 Apr) – Government soldiers have recovered Friday the decapitated bodies of seven people kidnapped by the al-Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf group in the southern Philippine island of Jolo.
Abu Sayyaf militants beheaded the hostages on Thursday after Benjamin Loong, the island’s governor rejected the group’s demand for P5 million ransoms.
The hostages, six of them construction workers and the seventh, a fisherman, were seized April 15 in Parang town. Their severed heads were sent to two military detachments on the island, said Maj. Eugene Batara, a regional army spokesman.
The kidnappers had demanded at least seven million pesos in exchange for the lives of the hostages. But Loong said the government has a strict no-ransom policy.
Six of those executed Nonoy Ampoy, Loloy Teodoro, Roger Francisco, Toto Milas, Wilmer Santos and Dennis delos Reyes were all working for Loong’s construction firm.
The bodies, hands bound behind the back and covered by banana leaves, were transported by a small truck to a morgue in Jolo town, where weeping relatives were waiting Friday.
“They killed my two cousins. They slaughtered them like a pig. They are all barbarians,” one man, whose two relatives were among those beheaded, said.
The victims were heading to work when militants kidnapped them. Police and military tagged the leader of the gang as Albader Parad, a notorious Abu Sayyaf commander, blamed for the spate of attacks against civilians and military targets in Jolo.
“This is how terrorism thrives. We condemn this barbarism. We will get the Abu Sayyaf,” Gen. Hermogenes Esperon, the Philippine military chief, told the Mindanao Examiner.
Others reports said two government soldiers traveling on a civilian jeep were also kidnapped by the Abu Sayyaf at a checkpoint in Parang town, but the military said it has no information about the attack.
Security forces are also battling Moro National Liberation Front rebels on the island and the clashes left at least 21 soldiers and gunmen dead and more than 100 wounded since fighting began April 13.
MNLF leader Habier Malik warned of more attacks. “There will be more bloodshed. We are not afraid to die fighting the enemies,” he said.
Malik accused the military of violating the September 1996 peace agreement, saying, troops, pursuing the Abu Sayyaf, had killed MNLF members and innocent civilians in several armed encounters on the island.
He said had repeatedly soldiers encroached in MNLF areas, sparking sporadic clashes. The military also accused the MNLF of coddling the Abu Sayyaf and Jemaah Islamiya bombers in Jolo, a charged strongly denied by Malik.
Malik has declared a holy war against the military.
The MNLF rebels, under Chieftain Nur Misuari, signed a peace agreement with the Philippine government in September 1996. After the peace agreement was signed, Misuari became the governor of the Muslim autonomous region. But despite the accord, there was a widespread disillusionment with the weak autonomy they were granted.
Under the peace agreement, Manila would provide a mini-Marshal Plan to spur economic development in Muslim areas in the south and livelihood and housing assistance to tens of thousands of former rebels to uplift their poor living standards.
Many MNLF members were disgruntled with the peace deal, saying, the Arroyo government failed to comply with some of its provisions and uplift their standards of living. They accused Manila of failing to develop the war-torn areas in the south.
And in November 2001, on the eve of the elections in the Muslim autonomous region, Misuari accused the government of reneging on the peace agreement, and launched a new rebellion in Jolo island and Zamboanga City, where more than 100 people were killed.
Misuari then escaped by boat to Malaysia, but had been arrested and deported to the Philippines. (Mindanao Examiner)
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