ZAMBOANGA CITY, Philippines (Mindanao Examiner / Oct. 11, 2008) – Police commandos killed an Abu Sayyaf militant and captured three more after a gun battle in the southern Filipino province of Sulu, officials said Saturday.
Officials said the fighting broke out late Friday afternoon after police foiled an Abu Sayyaf attempt to kidnap a grocery store owner in Jolo town.
Four militants managed to escape during the clash, but police forces were sent to hunt down the gunmen Saturday.
The militants were on a jeep and waiting for their victim when they noticed the presence of policemen and opened fire on them, sparking a firefight that left one gunman dead, said Senior Superintendent Julasirim Kasim, the provincial police chief.
There were no reports of casualties on the police side, he said. “One Abu Sayyaf was killed in the fighting and we have captured three others and they are being interrogated,” Kasim told the Mindanao Examiner.
He identified the slain militant as Adjili Sakilan and the three others captured as Asma Awang, Makambian Sakilan and Tagayan Sakilan, all natives of Talipao town, a known stronghold of the Abu Sayyaf group.
Kasim said the captured militants were also behind the kidnappings in June of an ABS-CBN television presenter Ces Drilon and her cameramen Jimmy Encarnacion and Angelo Valderama, including a Muslim university professor Octavio Dinampo, in Sulu’s Maimbung town. They were freed a week later in exchange for a huge ransom.
Another Abu Sayyaf faction is holding two aid workers Esperancita Hupida and Millet Mendoza it kidnapped in Tipo-Tipo town in Basilan province last month.
The kidnapping came just a month after Abu Sayyaf militants freed four electric cooperative workers - brothers Alberto and Emilberto Singson; Paul Herowig and his brother Birin – in the town of Al-Barka in Basilan province.
Two others Pilardo Tolentino and Jayson Constancio who were also kidnapped by the Abu Sayyaf in Basilan in July were rescued by security forces after a firefight with militants in the town of Mohammad Ajul. The two men, contracted by telecommunication giant Globe Telecom, were seized July 16 while on their way to inspect a cell site in the town's Languyan village.
Philippine military chief Alexander Yano said the Abu Sayyaf, which was originally fighting for the establishment of a strict Islamic state in Mindanao, had been reduced to being a bandit group. The United States tagged the Abu Sayyaf group as a foreign terrorist organization with links to the al-Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiya. (Mindanao Examiner)
No comments:
Post a Comment