Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo said yesterday she was considering imposing martial law on a southern island to end a rebel menace as fighting raged between troops and Muslim guerrillas holding US and Philippine hostages.
The military said two soldiers were killed and several wounded yesterday in the running gun battle on Basilan, the rugged southern island where commando units have been tracking the Abu Sayyaf rebels in the mountainous interior since Friday.
At least 18 soldiers and an undetermined number of rebels and civilians have been killed in the fighting.
"Martial law is the prerogative of the president. We are studying the situation," Arroyo told a news conference when asked about proposals for the armed forces to be given wider powers to deal with the hostage crisis.
Civilian and military officials who had made the proposal said such emergency powers would be limited to Basilan Island only.
"We are studying ... whether we should declare martial law at all," Arroyo said. "You have to consult because the question is what can you do with it that you cannot do without it and [whether] that difference will make a difference."
The Philippines is sensitive about martial law. In 1972, late dictator Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law to quell what he said were threats from rebels.
But he used the wide-ranging powers to stay in office for the next 14 years in the face of increasing opposition to his regime.
Arroyo said the 10-day hostage crisis needed to be resolved quickly but with the safety of the hostages as top priority.
"We have had enough of the terror brought by the Abu Sayyaf ... Society must unite against the Abu Sayyaf so that this pest will disappear from our lives," she said. "We will bury the story of the Abu Sayyaf."
There were no reported casualties among the Abu Sayyaf rebels in the latest fighting and all the remaining hostages were alive, an army spokesman said.
Naval gunboats have set up a blockade around Basilan, 900km south of Manila, to prevent the guerrillas from escaping to other islands, he said.
Senior officials said the Abu Sayyaf contacted a government-designated mediator yesterday to try to end the stand-off and initially demanded that soldiers back off.
"The talk was for the military to withdraw. That is normal," Interior Secretary Jose Lina said on local radio.
It was the first known contact between the government intermediary and the Abu Sayyaf since the rebels snatched three US and 17 Philippine hostages from the Dos Palmas island resort northwest of Basilan on May 27.
The Abu Sayyaf professes to be fighting for a Muslim homeland in the south of the Roman Catholic nation but its main activity appears to be kidnap for ransom. The government calls them bandits and has refused to pay any ransom.
RSS