Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte yesterday rejected proposals for him to declare a state of emergency in a violent southern island to more rapidly defeat Abu Sayyaf militants, who killed 15 soldiers in his government’s largest single-day combat loss so far.
Duterte also announced that government troops and police would not enforce a warrant of arrest for prominent Muslim rebel leader Nur Misuari, who leads one of two large Muslim insurgent groups in the country’s south, so they could talk.
While Duterte has pursued talks with Misuari’s Moro National Liberation Front and the larger Moro Islamic Liberation Front, he has ordered troops to destroy the smaller, but more brutal Abu Sayyaf, which is notorious for bombings, ransom kidnappings and beheadings.
A massive military offensive in Sulu, a predominantly Muslim province where the Abu Sayyaf has had a long presence in lush jungles, has left 30 militants dead, including an influential commander.
However, the Abu Sayyaf on Monday struck back as the Philippines was celebrating National Heroes’ Day, and killed 15 soldiers, including one officer, in fighting off Sulu’s mountainous Patikul town.
Asked if he would relent to a longstanding proposal by military officials to place Sulu under a state of emergency to allow government forces to arrest militants more easily and take tougher action against local officials conniving with the Abu Sayyaf, Duterte said he would not.
“No, it’s just punitive police action by the security forces of the government,” Duterte said at a news conference. “The magnitude of the trouble there does not warrant anything except the industry of the” military and police.
Duterte asked Misuari to come out of hiding after being criminally charged for his role in a 2013 rebel siege of Zamboanga city that left more than 200 combatants and villagers dead.
Nearly 300 of Misuari’s rebel were captured.
Duterte said Misuari preferred to meet him in Kuala Lumpur and replied during a telephone call on Tuesday that he was ready to meet the rebel anywhere.
The 77-year-old Misuari instigated a Muslim separatist rebellion in the south during former Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos’ rule in the 1970s, but accepted limited autonomy for minority Muslims in the south and signed a 1996 peace deal with the government.
However, many of his rebels refused to lay down their arms and continued on-and-off attacks.
Although he has faded into the background and is now sickly, Misuari still commands a sizable armed group and Duterte said he would not dare put him in police detention.
“If he dies for whatever reason, we’re compromised,” Duterte said. “There is going to be a conflagration, it’ll be hard for us. He’s the only known leader who has the influence and the stature.”
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion
UNDER INVESTIGATION: Members of the local Muslim community had raised concerns with the police about the boy, who officials said might have been radicalized online A 16-year-old boy armed with a knife was shot dead by police after he stabbed a man in the Australian west coast city of Perth, officials said yesterday. The incident occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store in suburban Willetton on Saturday night. The teen attacked the man and then rushed at police officers before he was shot, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook told reporters. “There are indications he had been radicalized online,” Cook told a news conference, adding that it appeared he acted alone. A man in his 30s was found at the scene with a stab wound to his back.