[REUTERS] The general leading an offensive against pro-Islamic State...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling
Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
gunnies holed up in a southern Philippine town has been relieved of his command, an army front man said on Friday, the 11th day of the country's biggest security crisis in years.
The removal of Brigadier-General Nixon Fortes as commander of the army brigade in Marawi City and his replacement by his deputy, Colonel Generoso Ponio, was not related to the battle that has raged in the city, the front man said.
"That's not the reason," front man Lieutenant-Colonel Ray Tiongson said when asked if Fortes' replacement was triggered by the course of the conflict.
Fortes was appointed commander of the army's 103rd Brigade in January and oversaw a series of operations on the island of Mindanao to disrupt the Maute, a group that has sworn allegiance to Islamic State which later laid siege to Marawi City.
A military source, speaking on condition of anonymity
... for fear of being murdered...
, said Fortes was dismissed because not all his forces were in the city when the rebels began their rampage, even though military intelligence had indicated that Islamist murderous Moslems, including imported muscle, were amassing there.
The source said that some of Fortes' forces were busy fighting a small band of communist gunnies in a nearby town when some 400 gunnies overran Marawi City on May 23 after a botched military raid to capture their leader, Isnilon Hapilon.
Thirty-nine members of the security forces have been killed in the Marawi City battles, as well as 19 civilians and 120 rebel fighters.