Gunmen who seized a bus in the southern Philippines have released all 13 of their hostages but escaped authorities after a two-day hijacking drama, a regional military commander said yesterday.
The three hijackers abandoned a second vehicle that they had been riding in with their hostages and fled on foot in the town of Lakewood, 775km south of Manila.
The hijacking took a bizarre twist earlier yesterday when the gunmen accepted an offer from Pagadian Roman Catholic Bishop Emmanuel Cavajar to drive them to a new location in exchange for releasing some of the hostages after crashing the bus.
Cavajar and four of the hostages were left behind in Lakewood while the nine others were freed on the road.
The three men, armed with an automatic pistol, an Uzi sub-machine gun and a hand grenade, boarded a Rural Transit bus near the Sapang Dalaga, apparently with the intention of robbing the passengers.
passengers freed
However, the men panicked when they passed a military checkpoint and instead hijacked the vehicle. They later crashed the bus into a ditch in the town of Labangan.
As the police and military cordoned off the area, the gunmen demanded a new vehicle to bring them to Pagadian to meet with their "commander."
It was then that Cavajar offered to drive the hijackers if they freed some of their hostages.
After striking a deal with the gunmen, Cavajar struck out for Pagadian with the hostages packed in the back of his truck, which was being trailed by several police vehicles. Some of the hostages were released on the road or told to jump from the back of Cavajar's truck.
But instead of going to Pagadian, the gunmen ordered vehicle to Lakewood where they escaped.
The local police director, Chief Superintendent Prospero Noble, said authorities were questioning the freed hostages on the identities of the gunmen but said that he thought the hijackers were just "bandits" who botched their robbery plans.
The Burmese junta has said that detained former leader Aung San Suu Kyi is “in good health,” a day after her son said he has received little information about the 80-year-old’s condition and fears she could die without him knowing. In an interview in Tokyo earlier this week, Kim Aris said he had not heard from his mother in years and believes she is being held incommunicado in the capital, Naypyidaw. Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was detained after a 2021 military coup that ousted her elected civilian government and sparked a civil war. She is serving a
China yesterday held a low-key memorial ceremony for the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) not attending, despite a diplomatic crisis between Beijing and Tokyo over Taiwan. Beijing has raged at Tokyo since Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi last month said that a hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan could trigger a military response from Japan. China and Japan have long sparred over their painful history. China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 Nanjing Massacre, in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in what was then its capital. A post-World War II Allied tribunal put the death toll
‘NO AMNESTY’: Tens of thousands of people joined the rally against a bill that would slash the former president’s prison term; President Lula has said he would veto the bill Tens of thousands of Brazilians on Sunday demonstrated against a bill that advanced in Congress this week that would reduce the time former president Jair Bolsonaro spends behind bars following his sentence of more than 27 years for attempting a coup. Protests took place in the capital, Brasilia, and in other major cities across the nation, including Sao Paulo, Florianopolis, Salvador and Recife. On Copacabana’s boardwalk in Rio de Janeiro, crowds composed of left-wing voters chanted “No amnesty” and “Out with Hugo Motta,” a reference to the speaker of the lower house, which approved the bill on Wednesday last week. It is
FALLEN: The nine soldiers who were killed while carrying out combat and engineering tasks in Russia were given the title of Hero of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea North Korean leader Kim Jong-un attended a welcoming ceremony for an army engineering unit that had returned home after carrying out duties in Russia, North Korean state media KCNA reported on Saturday. In a speech carried by KCNA, Kim praised officers and soldiers of the 528th Regiment of Engineers of the Korean People’s Army (KPA) for “heroic” conduct and “mass heroism” in fulfilling orders issued by the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea during a 120-day overseas deployment. Video footage released by North Korea showed uniformed soldiers disembarking from an aircraft, Kim hugging a soldier seated in a wheelchair, and soldiers and officials
RSS