[INTERAKSYON] 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 (ASG) big shot Isnilon Hapilon managed to escape from his Basilan ...Basilan is a rugged, jungle-covered island in the southern Philippines. It is a known stronghold of the Abu Sayyaf, bandidos, and maybe even orcs. Most people with any sense travel with armed escorts... enclave and moved to Central Mindanao at the behest of the terror group 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 Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems.... in Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
The move is to test whether Central Mindanao is conducive to the establishment of a "wilayat" or an Islamic State, Department of National Defense (DND) Secretary Delfin Lorenzana said Thursday.
Hapilon's breakout, with a small group of loyal followers, took place middle of December, he added.
Lorenzana said Basilan and Jolo were too small and and they can be easily be trapped there, hence the ASG leader's decision to move out in Central Mindanao where he is now rallying Maute Group members to support ISIS.
As of this posting, Maute Group members are placed at around 100 armed fighters.
"We know he is there so we are conducting operations against them in Lanao Del Sur, near the Butig area, just beside Lake Lanao, we have been there before with the President sometime last November or December, so we continue to operate against the ASG," the DND chief added.
He said all of these information are from their intelligence sources.
As this developed, the Western Mindanao Command’s (WMC) 103rd Infantry Brigade under Col. Nixon Fortes scored another major breakthrough in its intensified campaign against the terror groups of ASG, Maute Group and foreign terror groups holed up in Butig, Lanao Del Sur.
"The terror groups are reported to have sustained a major casualty with a number of them dead or seriously maimed after a midnight (between the 25th and 26th January 2017) surgical air strike and a well-directed and observed artillery rounds accurately landing in the identified locations of the terror groups," Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) spokesperson Col. Edgard Arevalo said.
As of this posting, ground troops have established foothold and begun their assault to the same objective of the preliminary attack midnight.
"They are now cautiously advancing to their designated objectives ‐ the location of ASG leader Isnilon Hamilon, his select group, and the Brothers Abdullah, Omar, and Otto Maute, and possibly other foreigners joining their notorious group," he added.
"We will await the validated details of the results of this operation as soon as we get confirmations from our troops now on the ground," Arevalo said.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
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