RP Military Mounts Ops vs NPA In Troubled South

CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY (Mindanao Examiner / 02 Mar) – Philippine soldiers mounted fresh operation Friday to capture a band of communist insurgents they earlier clashes in the southern province of Bukidnon.

The military said soldiers were pursuing members of the New People’s Army in Malaybalay City where clashes occurred Thursday. At least 10 insurgents and two soldiers were killed in the fighting.

The soldiers were patrolling a village when they encountered the insurgents, sparking a running gun battle between the two groups. Soldiers said they recovered several automatic weapons left behind by NPA gunmen during their escape.

There were no reports of fresh fighting in the area. The NPA is the armed wing of the outlawed Communist Party of the Philippines which is fighting for the establishment of a Marxist state in the country.

Peace talks between the Arroyo government and the insurgents collapsed in 2004 after the United States included the CPP and NPA and its political arm, the National Democratic Front on its terror list on Manila’s prodding. (With a report from Juley Reyes in Manila)

RP Troops Kill 7 Sayyaf Terrorists In Fierce Sea Battle Near Sabah

JOLO ISLAND (Mindanao Examiner / 06 Jan) – Philippine security forces killed at least 7 members of the al-Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf group in fierce sea battle on Saturday off the southern island of Tawi-Tawi near the Malaysian border, officials said.

Officials said the soldiers attacked an Abu Sayyaf speedboat after it tried to escape from a sea blockade near Panglima Sugala town at around 4.45 a.m. The boat’s passengers traded automatic gunfire with soldiers until they were all killed.

The fighting broke out just two days before President Gloria Arroyo is to hold a military conference in Jolo island near Tawi-Tawi.

The exact number of the passengers was unknown, but a Filipino military spokesman Lt. Col. Bartolome Bacarro said soldiers recovered at least 7 bodies and several high-powered firearms, including an M-203 automatic rifle.

“Joint AFP units encountered ASG elements onboard a speedboat and after a 30 minutes firefight at sea, the group of Abu Hubaida and Black Killer was completely neutralized. The result, seven enemies are killed, all body counts, and the double-engine boat and weapons have been recovered,” he told the Mindanao Examiner by phone.

It was not immediately known where the Abu Sayyaf militants were headed to or if they were planning an escape to nearby Sabah in Malaysia or return to Jolo island, where troops are battling hunting other members of the terrorist group.

Black Killer was an alias used by an Abu Sayyaf sub-leader, Jundam Hadjirul, who escaped from jail on Basilan island in April 2004 along with 52 prisoners, including 18 militants.

Little was known about Abu Hubaida, but the Abu Sayyaf is included in the US terror list and Washington offered as much as five million dollars bounty for the capture of its leader Khadaffy Janjalani and his lieutenants.

Western Mindanao military chief Lt. Gen. Eugenio Cedo ordered security forces Saturday to track down other Abu Sayyaf members and intensify their offensive.

The Philippine military last month announced that soldiers dug up the alleged body of Janjalani, who was killed in a firefight in September in Jolo island’s Patikul town. He took over command of the Abu Sayyaf when his brother, Abubakar Abdurajak Janjalani, who founded the group, was killed in a firefight with policemen in 1998 in Basilan Island.

Government soldiers were still hunting other senior Abu Sayyaf leaders and nearly a dozen Jemaah Islamiyah militants, including Umar Patek and Dulmatin. Both were believed with the Abu Sayyaf group in Jolo island, about 950 kms south of Manila.

The two men Patek and Dulmatin are wanted for the October 2002 bombings in the resort Indonesian island of Bali in which 202 mostly foreign tourists were killed. (Mindanao Examiner)

General Visits Troops Wounded In Sayyaf Fighting

Philippine Army Major General Eugenio Cedo, center, speaks with soldiers who were wounded while fighting al-Qaida militants linked to Abu Sayyaf and Jemaah Islamiya militants in the southern island of Jolo, during his visit to a military hospital Friday Oct. 13, 2006, in Zamboanga, southern Philippines. Two Philippine army soldiers were killed in a gunbattle Wednesday as they pressed a continuing offensive against militants, on southern Jolo island, believed to be the hideout of Indonesian terrorists Dumatin and Umar Patek, with the military vowing not to be distracted by apparent rebel diversionary bomb attacks. (Mindanao Examiner)

ZAMBOANGA CITY (Mindanao Examiner / 13 Oct) – Philippine Army Major General Eugenio Cedo on Friday visited soldiers wounded in clashes with the Abu Sayyaf in the southern Jolo island.

Cedo, clad in camouflage uniform and accompanied by senior army officials, spoke to each of eight army scout ranger soldiers at a military hospital in Zamboanga City. He also gave them P5,000 each.

“Don’t worry, our soldiers are pursuing the terrorists who are responsible to all these. And we will get one by one until they are all eliminated,” Cedo told the soldiers.

The soldiers were wounded in Wednesday fighting in Jolo’s Patikul town where two infantrymen also died.

Cedo said troops were pursuing the chieftain of the Abu Sayyaf, Khadaffy Janjalani; and two senior Jemaah Islamiya leaders, Dulmatin and Umar Patek, both wanted in the bombings of two night clubs in the resort island of Bali in 2002 and the JW Marriot hotel in 2003 in Jakarta that killed more than 200 people.

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.

Dulmatin fled to Mindanao in the southern Philippines soon after the bombing of the JW Marriott hotel. 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 MILF camps in southern Philippines. (Mindanao Examiner)

2 Soldiers Killed, 8 Others Wounded In Sayyaf Clash In Jolo Island

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