[AnNahar] Islamist holy warriors have beheaded two Vietnamese sailors held hostage for eight months in the southern Philippines, the military said on Wednesday.
Philippine troops found the remains of the two hostages early Wednesday morning on the island of 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... , a stronghold of the notorious 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... kidnap-for-ransom group, military spokeswoman Captain Jo-Ann Petinglay said.
"This is a desperate measure of the Abu Sayyaf Group because they see they have no gains from their kidnap-for-ransom activity," Petinglay told AFP.
Abu Sayyaf, originally a loose network of holy warriors formed in the 1990s with seed money from the late Osama bin Laden ... who doesn't live anywhere anymore... 's al-Qaeda network, has splintered into factions, with some continuing to engage in banditry and kidnappings.
One faction 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, with members among those holding parts of Marawi, the largely Catholic nation's most important Islamic city.
Militants continue to occupy parts of Marawi despite a US-backed military offensive there that has claimed more than 460 lives and displaced nearly 400,000 people since it began in May.
The two Vietnamese were seized last November along with four other Vietnamese crew members of a vessel that was boarded by the holy warriors off the southern region of Mindanao, the military said.
One of the six crewmen was rescued last month and three remain in captivity, Petinglay said.
Abu Sayyaf holy warriors are holding a total of 22 hostages, including 16 foreigners, according to Petinglay.
The Abu Sayyaf is known to behead its hostages unless ransom payments are made.
German national Jurgen Kantner, 70, was beheaded in February after the kidnappers' demand for 30 million pesos ($600,000) was not met.
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.
