Philippine forces yesterday rescued two of three Indonesian hostages after a gunbattle with their captors from the Muslim militant group Abu Sayyaf in the southern jungles, a regional military commander said.
A soldier and a militant were killed in two clashes at dawn that allowed troops to rescue the two Indonesians in the mountainous hinterlands off Panamao town in Sulu province, Lieutenant General Cirilito Sobejana said.
Troops, backed by rocket-firing helicopters, were pursuing the militants in an effort to rescue the third Indonesian, he said.
“We have cordoned the area so we are very optimistic that we will recover the remaining Indonesian,” Sobejana told reporters.
The Indonesian fishermen were kidnapped at gunpoint by the ransom-seeking militants in September off Malaysia’s Sabah state and taken to their jungle bases in Sulu, despite tighter security by Malaysian, Philippine and Indonesian forces to prevent such abductions along their maritime border.
Military offensives against militants, such as the Abu Sayyaf, have reduced abductions in the past few years, but they continue to occur.
Abu Sayyaf militants have staged kidnappings in and off Sabah in the past few years, sparking a regional security alarm.
The rescue of the Indonesians came after the Philippine military inflicted successive battle defeats recently to the Abu Sayyaf, which is recognized as a terrorist organization by the US and the Philippines.
Troops have killed a “high-value,” but little-known Abu Sayyaf commander, Talha Jumsah, near Sulu’s mountainous Patikul town.
Jumsah acted as a key link between the Islamic State (IS) group and local extremists and helped set up a series of deadly suicide attacks in Sulu this year, officials said.
The Abu Sayyaf emerged in the late 1980s as an offshoot of the decades-long Muslim separatist insurgency in the south of the largely Roman Catholic nation.
After losing its commanders early in battle, the Abu Sayyaf rapidly degenerated into a small, but brutal group blamed for ransom kidnappings, beheadings and other acts of banditry.
Most of its militant factions have pledged allegiance to the IS.
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