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Philippine Army Clashes With Kidnappers
BASILAN, Philippines, June 1 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Two Philippine soldiers were killed and 21 other people were wounded in a gunfight on Friday as security forces caught up with Abu Sayyaf guerrillas holding 20 hostages, including three Americans, news agencies reported.
The rebels said two of the hostages were wounded in the three-hour clash in the southern island of Basilan, but the military dismissed the claim. It was not clear if the Abu Sayyaf suffered any losses. But an army spokesman told news agencies that a military firefight of that length must have resulted in some causality among the rebels.
The rebels say they are an Islamic group fighting for more rights for the Muslim minority in the predominantly Christian country. But some Muslim scholars have condemned the group as unIslamic for its violent and bandit-like methods.
Military spokesmen said two soldiers were killed and 14 other army men were wounded when the platoon ran into about 100 guerrillas at their jungle camp.
The online edition of the Philippine Star quoted Col. Jose Mendoza, deputy chief for civil military operations, as saying that the "Abu Sayyaf bandits escaped in different directions with heavy casualties."
"Several bodies were discovered, some were dragged away by their fleeing comrades," Mendoza said. His statements were not reported by major news agencies.
Local officials listed seven civilians injured, all hit with shrapnel apparently from wayward shells. The army has denied using artillery.
The Philippine Star said some 500 families have already fled Tuburan to escape the fighting. Most of the estimated 2,000 displaced residents of Bgys. Pegengan, Bohe Bessey and Upper Sinangcapan have sought shelter with relatives or in campsites, the paper said.
The Abu Sayyaf is reportedly well-equipped with bazookas, mortars and Uzi assault rifles - apparently bought last year with huge ransom payments from another high-profile hostage crisis, when foreign tourists were held for several months.
"The defense perimeter of this kidnapping group for the temporary base that they have established must have been breached by our troops," Brigadier General Edilberto Adan Adan said in Manila.
The firefight was the first contact of any sort with the kidnappers since they seized tourists in an upmarket resort off the western island of Palawan on Sunday and fled southeast by boat across the Sulu Sea.
Adan said troops and air support are rushing to cordon off a 180 square-kilometer (72 square-mile) area, while naval vessels would quarantine the 1,300 square-kilometer island. He gave no timetable for the operation.
Meanwhile, Abu Sayyaf spokesman Abu Sabaya has reportedly renewed a threat to slaughter the hostages.
The hostages include U.S. couple Martin and Gracia Burnham, Kansas natives doing Christian missionary work in the Philippines, and Californian Guillermo Sobrero.
Sobrero was born in Peru and became a naturalized American just three weeks ago, the Peruvian embassy in Manila said.
About 1,200 U.S. troops, including elite Marines and Navy SEALs, began annual naval maneuvers with local troops off the northern Philippines on Friday, but Manila insists none of them are involved in the rescue attempt.
"No assistance from the United States is being received at this time," Adan said.
Using a satellite telephone, Abu Sayyaf spokesman Sabaya called up a radio station in nearby Zamboanga city to report that troops "opened fire on the Abu Sayyaf and the hostages [who were] bathing and swimming in the river."
One of the women hostages, Teresa Ganzon said: "Please refrain from this military action that has made us so afraid. These encounters are going to cost us our lives."
But Adan said, "we are not thinking of a cessation of hostilities here. We want to maintain contact with this terrorist group so they cannot escape."
Tiglao said a government "intermediary" is in contact with the kidnappers, who "sent a message that, as we always have known, this has always been for ransom money."
But he ruled out ransom and said the government would talk to them only "if they would be willing to lay down their arms or release their hostages."
The 1,100-member Abu Sayyaf is a self-styled Muslim separatist group who engages in bombings and kidnappings in a campaign to supposedly set up an Islamic state in the southern third of the mainly Roman Catholic Philippines.
They seized 21 people, including 10 western tourists from the Malaysian resort of Sipadan last year, and shipped them to Jolo Island in the southern Philippines, ransoming off all but one of them for millions of dollars.
They beheaded two Filipino hostages during a military a rescue attempt in Basilan last year.
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