Soldiers clashed with militants linked to al-Qaeda in the southern Philippines yesterday, leaving three rebels and two soldiers dead just days after a top Indonesian terror suspect eluded a military raid on a nearby island, an official said.
The fighting took place in Maimbung township on the western coast of Jolo island, a stronghold of the Islamic extremist Abu Sayyaf group about 950km south of Manila, while troops were searching for a local businesswoman kidnapped by militants last week, regional military spokesman Major Eugene Batara said.
The bodies of three rebels and an M-16 rifle were recovered from the scene of the clash, Batara said. Two soldiers were killed and five others wounded and transferred to an army hospital, he said.
Batara said troops were on a mission to rescue Rosalie Lao, 45, a Jolo resident who was abducted by the rebels on Jan. 28.
Last week, troops on nearby Tawi-Tawi island shot and killed an Abu Sayyaf commander, Wahab Upao, but missed the Indonesian terror suspect, Dulmatin, one of several operatives of the Indonesian militant group Jemaah Islamiyah believed to be hiding in the southern Philippines
Dulmatin has been implicated in the 2002 bombings that killed 202 people in Bali, Indonesia.
Police in China detained dozens of pastors of one of its largest underground churches over the weekend, a church spokesperson and relatives said, in the biggest crackdown on Christians since 2018. The detentions, which come amid renewed China-US tensions after Beijing dramatically expanded rare earth export controls last week, drew condemnation from US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who on Sunday called for the immediate release of the pastors. Pastor Jin Mingri (金明日), founder of Zion Church, an unofficial “house church” not sanctioned by the Chinese government, was detained at his home in the southern city of Beihai on Friday evening, said
Floods on Sunday trapped people in vehicles and homes in Spain as torrential rain drenched the northeastern Catalonia region, a day after downpours unleashed travel chaos on the Mediterranean island of Ibiza. Local media shared videos of roaring torrents of brown water tearing through streets and submerging vehicles. National weather agency AEMET decreed the highest red alert in the province of Tarragona, warning of 180mm of rain in 12 hours in the Ebro River delta. Catalan fire service spokesman Oriol Corbella told reporters people had been caught by surprise, with people trapped “inside vehicles, in buildings, on ground floors.” Santa Barbara Mayor Josep Lluis
The Venezuelan government on Monday said that it would close its embassies in Norway and Australia, and open new ones in Burkina Faso and Zimbabwe in a restructuring of its foreign service, after weeks of growing tensions with the US. The closures are part of the “strategic reassignation of resources,” Venezueland President Nicolas Maduro’s government said in a statement, adding that consular services to Venezuelans in Norway and Australia would be provided by diplomatic missions, with details to be shared in the coming days. The Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that it had received notice of the embassy closure, but no
A missing fingertip offers a clue to Mako Nishimura’s criminal past as one of Japan’s few female yakuza, but after clawing her way out of the underworld, she now spends her days helping other retired gangsters reintegrate into society. The multibillion-dollar yakuza organized crime network has long ruled over Japan’s drug rings, illicit gambling dens and sex trade. In the past few years, the empire has started to crumble as members have dwindled and laws targeting mafia are tightened. An intensifying police crackdown has shrunk yakuza forces nationwide, with their numbers dipping below 20,000 last year for the first time since records
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