The Philippine military launched an offensive yesterday against a breakaway Muslim rebel group that opposes a peace deal and has claimed responsibility for a recent bomb attack that wounded seven soldiers in the country’s volatile south.
There was “intense fighting” early yesterday between soldiers and the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Movement in North Cotabato Province’s Aleosan township, said Colonel Dickson Hermoso of the army’s Sixth Infantry Division.
The rebel group set off a roadside bomb on Wednesday in nearby Maguindanao Province, wounding seven soldiers, and warned of more attacks. It broke away from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, which has signed a preliminary peace accord with the government.
The military said another roadside bomb believed to have been planted by the group exploded early yesterday in another town in Maguindanao. There were no casualties. A second homemade bomb was found and safely detonated in the same area.
Provincial Governor Emmylou Mendoza said about 2,000 people fled their homes to avoid being caught in the fighting.
A similar offensive was launched earlier against the al-Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf in Basilan Province farther south to stop the militants from manufacturing bombs for attacks in other southern cities. At least one soldier and an estimated seven militants were killed in the fighting in Basilan on Thursday.
Local army commander Colonel Carlito Galvez said the offensive was meant to prevent the group from making more bombs for attacks after Eid al-Fitr, the three-day festivities celebrating the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan that began on Thursday.
Abu Sayyaf is notorious for bomb attacks, ransom kidnappings and beheading hostages. It is on the US and European lists of terror organizations.
Several bomb attacks over the past two weeks in the southern Philippines have killed 16 people and wounded about 100 others.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing