Philippine army troops rescued 13 Filipino hostages, mostly children, during a gunbattle with Muslim guerrillas yesterday but 21 other captives, including a US missionary couple, remained in rebel hands.
The fighting on the southern island of Basilan erupted after the Abu Sayyaf gunmen beheaded 10 other Filipinos whom they abducted on Thursday from the Basilan town of Lamitan, military officials said.
Among those rescued were seven children, aged nine to 12. Some of them recounted to reporters how the guerrillas killed with machetes another hostage who had tried to fight back.
"He asked them to loosen the tie around his hands because he wanted to eat ... then he fought back and tried to grab their guns so he was shot and hacked to death," nine-year-old Harold Hosain said, referring to one of the executed hostages.
The 13 people rescued and the 10 who were beheaded were among 36 villagers seized by the guerrillas during Thursday's raid. Thirteen other hostages in the same group either escaped earlier or were freed.
One of those released on Friday was a young mother who was allegedly raped by two of her abductors in front of her child, the Manila Standard newspaper said.
"These Abu Sayyaf are bandits from their toenails up to their hair. They are no longer human beings. They are dogs," Basilan's Muslim provincial governor Wahab Akbar told a local radio station, denouncing the beheadings.
The hostages said their captors made them walk through mountainous jungles for three days and nights.
Hermie Revillas, 29, one of those rescued, broke down upon reaching a military camp when she learned that her husband, who was also abducted but got separated from her, was among the dead.
"He had not done anything wrong," she sobbed. "It was not enough that they killed him. Why did they have to behead him?"
Suspected guerrillas under police custody said the Lamitan raid was provoked by the arrest of more than 100 alleged Abu Sayyaf members and supporters during a recent military crackdown ordered by President Gloria Arroyo.
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