Philippine President Gloria Arroyo pledged no let-up in military action against Muslim rebels yesterday as military leaders dismissed as a bluff their claim to have beheaded a US hostage.
Troops and the Abu Sayyaf rebels fought a brief gunbattle near Tipo-Tipo town on the southern island of Basilan early yesterday, one day after two bodies were found in the area. But officials identified both bodies as those of local men and not of Guillermo Sobero, one of three Americans seized in May whose execution the rebels announced on Tuesday.
"The Abu Sayyaf is a plague on our race, a curse to their religion," Arroyo told a news conference. "They live by the draconian code of an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. We have responded in kind, we will continue to meet fire with fire and more."
Meanwhile, Filipinos have expressed outrage at the claimed beheading of a US hostage, with calls for the guerrillas to be hunted down even if it means sacrificing their remaining hostages.
All 77 million Filipinos are now being held hostage, not just the 28 captives on Basilan, newspaper columnists said yesterday.
From Muslim leaders to newspaper editorials and street polls there has been an overwhelming call for the guerrillas to be permanently silenced. There was little sympathy for their stated aim of self-determination.
By announcing the murder of Sobero, and threatening to kill two other American hostages, the Abu Sayyaf "has raised the stakes to an unprecedented level," the Today newspaper said. "The lives of hostages, tragic though it may be, may be worth the price if the result is the extermination of the Abu Sayyaf."
Muslim community leaders were quoted on local television as saying the Abu Sayyaf chiefs should first be prosecuted and then sentenced to death.
The sense of fury in the Philippines has been heightened by the timing of the Abu Sayyaf announcement that Sobero was beheaded Tuesday as an "Independence Day gift."
For dishonoring Independence Day, "Abu Sayyaf must be hunted down without mercy," said The Manila Standard.
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