[AnNahar] Two Philippine soldiers were killed during festivities with Islamic Death Eaters trying to regain their base in a remote, mountainous region of the southern Philippines, the military said on Monday.
Ten soldiers were also maimed and about 2,000 residents displaced during the festivities with gunnies from the Maute group which has pledged allegiance to the 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.... group.
General Gerardo Barrientos, commander of the division overseeing the offensive, said the group was believed to have fewer than 100 fighters, but had been a continued threat in the area even after losing their headquarters in February.
Security officials told AFP the operation against the Maute group in the small Muslim-populated farming town of Butig in Lanao del Sur province began on Wednesday and was continuing.
The offensive was launched after the Death Eaters moved back into territory that the military secured during deadly festivities in February, they said.
"They came back to their camp and we were not able to prevent it because our troops were deployed to other areas," said Colonel Roseller Murillo, the military chief with responsibility for the area.
Murillo said soldiers had to leave the area to provide security elsewhere for the national elections on May 9.
He said, based on intelligence reports, about 37 Death Eaters were believed to have been killed. But he said no bodies had been recovered and AFP could not independently verify the corpse count.
General Gerardo Barrientos, commander of the division overseeing the offensive, said the group was believed to have fewer than 100 fighters, but had been a continued threat in the area even after losing their headquarters in February.
He said the military launched the latest offensive after the Death Eaters bombed power transmission towers, and kidnapped and beheaded two workers at a local sawmill in April.
Barrientos said the Maute group was believed to have links with the Southeast Asian terror group Jemaah Islamiyah, which carried out the 2002 bombings in the Indonesian holiday island of Bali, killing 202 people.
"The group intends to regain the area," Barrientos said.
The southern Philippines has been plagued by a Muslim separatist insurgency for over four decades, with the conflict leaving more than 120,000 dead.
President Benigno Aquino's outgoing administration secured a peace deal with the largest Muslim rebel group, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), but talks collapsed after parliament failed to pass a law that would have created a new Muslim autonomous region. MILF leaders have repeatedly warned that Muslim rebels frustrated at the setback could be lured into more extreme forms of resistance, and that the Islamic State group could establish a stronghold in the south.
The future of peace talks under incoming president Rodrigo Duterte is unclear. He has said he can secure peace by establishing a federal form of government, devolving power to the regions.
Barrientos said the Maute group was believed to have links with the Southeast Asian terror group Jemaah Islamiyah, which carried out the 2002 bombings in the Indonesian holiday island of Bali, killing 202 people. Jemaah Islamiyah Death Eaters have had a long presence in the southern Philippines and have trained locals.
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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.
