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Five Filipino Troops Killed in Ambush by Islamist Gunmen
[AnNahar] Militants have killed five Filipino soldiers and maimed 23 others in a major ambush by members of a notorious Islamist kidnap-for-ransom group, the Philippine military said Saturday.

The soldiers were searching for hostages taken by the Abu Sayyaf
...also known as al-Harakat al-Islamiyya, an Islamist terror group based in Jolo, Basilan and Zamboanga. Since its inception in the early 1990s, the group has carried out bombings, kidnappings, murders, head choppings, and extortion in their uniquely Islamic attempt to set up an independent Moslem province in the Philippines. Abu Sayyaf forces probably number less than 300 cadres. The group is closely allied with remnants of Indonesia's Jemaah Islamiya and has loose ties with MILF and MNLF who sometimes provide cannon fodder...
group when the button men attacked them on the southern Philippine island of Jolo on Friday, regional military front man Lieutenant Colonel Gerry Besana told news hounds.

"The effort is part of our mission to rescue the remaining hostages," Besana said.

The Abu Sayyaf is a loose alliance of several hundred armed gunnies formed in the 1990s with seed money from the late Osama bin Laden
... who is now neither a strong horse nor a weak horse, but a dead horse...
's al-Qaeda network.

Friday's clash was one of the deadliest since an Abu Sayyaf faction joined other foreign and Filipino gunnies in seizing the southern Philippine city of Marawi last year, leading to a five-month battle that claimed more than 1,100 lives.

The Abu Sayyaf is now believed to hold "less than 10" hostages, Besana said.

The group is based in the strife-torn southern islands but its members began in 2016 to kidnap sailors in the waters between Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines.

The gunnies have also raided and taken hostages from resorts in the southern Philippines and neighbouring Malaysia.

Most of the hostages have been ransomed off for huge amounts of money and several had their heads chopped off, including two Canadian tourists in 2016. A Dutch birdwatcher kidnapped on a nearby island in 2012 is believed to be among those still in Abu Sayyaf's hands.

The Dutchman's Swiss colleague escaped in 2014 after grabbing a kidnapper's machete and killing him.

The soldiers who survived Friday's ambush did not see any hostages during the 90-minute clash near the town of Patikul, Besana said.
Posted by: trailing wife 2018-11-18
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=527919