| Submit your comments on this article |
| Southeast Asia |
| Death toll from Philippines gunfight rises to 23 |
| 2005-11-13 |
| Fighting between Philippine soldiers and suspected members of an al Qaeda-linked militant group on the southern island of Jolo has escalated, an army general said on Sunday as the death toll rose to 23. The fighting erupted on Friday when Marine soldiers hunting a one-armed, horse-riding commander of the Abu Sayyaf group, ran into a large group of fighters in Indanan town near the rebel headquarters. "The offensive is ongoing," Brigadier-General Alexander Aleo, the army commander on the island, told reporters. "There is no room for terrorists on Jolo island. We will get them sooner or later because many Muslim residents are helping and providing us information about the terrorists." Aleo said four soldiers had died and 19 been wounded since fighting began on Friday. Some of the wounded had been airlifted to an army hospital in the southern port city of Zamboanga. On Saturday, the military had put the death toll at three troopers killed and about a dozen wounded. Aleo said that at least 19 suspected militants had also been killed when troops hammered rebel positions with howitzers and mortar fire, but no bodies had been recovered. Aleo said two battalions of soldiers were battling about 100 Muslim rebels led by Radullan Sahiron, the Abu Sayyaf chief on Jolo, the target of a government manhunt since early this year. About 25 soldiers and 120 rebels were killed in a two-month army offensive last February. Abu Sayyaf, the smallest of four Muslim rebel groups in the southern Philippines, is suspected of having links with al Qaeda and regional militant network Jemaah Islamiah. It has been blamed for a wave of bombings in the south and Manila since 2002. The group claimed responsibility for the worst terror attack in the mainly Roman Catholic country -- the 2004 bombing of a ferry near Manila that killed more than 100 people. Troops renewed their search for Sahiron after police had to admit that a man they had arrested turned out to be a lookalike of the rebel leader. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |