Top leaders of the al-Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf group were killed through a combination of sustained military operations and development aid, the Philippine defense minister said yesterday.
Months of community dialogue, medical assistance and infrastructure projects on the southern Philippine island of Jolo underpinned military operations that led to the killing of the group's top leaders, Hermogenes Ebdane said.
"The world witnessed the fall of the elusive leaders of the Abu Sayyaf group in several military encounters," Ebdane said in an address to the Shangri-La Dialogue, a meeting of regional defense chiefs in Singapore.
`hard and soft'
"What the world did not see were the operations that applied the combination of hard and soft approaches to addressing terrorism," he said.
The military launched a major offensive last August on volatile Jolo, about 960km south of Manila. It targeted leaders of Abu Sayyaf and another group, Jemaah Islamiyah, who together have been blamed for attacks including a bomb blast on a ferry in Manila Bay in 2004 that killed 116 people.
Abu Sayyaf chieftain Khaddafy Janjalani and his presumed successor, Abu Sulaiman, were both killed in the operations, part of a campaign that began in 2002 to apply a combination of humanitarian work and military tactics to win over the local Muslim population and marginalize militants.
Washington has funded roads, schools and other civic projects on Jolo, and the US military has helped train and arm underfunded Philippine forces and often flies P-3C Orion spy planes to help track insurgents hiding in Jolo's tropical jungles.
into the jungle
The battle setbacks have driven more than 300 Abu Sayyaf remnants, split into at least six factions, along with a few Indonesian terror suspects, deeper into the jungle and provided a months-long respite from violence in Jolo's townships.
Ebdane said heightened interaction between the government and local communities had constricted Abu Sayyaf's previously unhampered room for activity and produced intelligence on the location of top leaders.
Military operations on land and control of the surrounding seas -- the fighters' traditional route of escape -- further strangled the group's operating space, he said.
"It is this combination of developmental and military tools that led to the fall of the top leaders," Ebdane said.
Incumbent Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa on Sunday claimed a runaway victory in the nation’s presidential election, after voters endorsed the young leader’s “iron fist” approach to rampant cartel violence. With more than 90 percent of the votes counted, the National Election Council said Noboa had an unassailable 12-point lead over his leftist rival Luisa Gonzalez. Official results showed Noboa with 56 percent of the vote, against Gonzalez’s 44 percent — a far bigger winning margin than expected after a virtual tie in the first round. Speaking to jubilant supporters in his hometown of Olon, the 37-year-old president claimed a “historic victory.” “A huge hug
Two Belgian teenagers on Tuesday were charged with wildlife piracy after they were found with thousands of ants packed in test tubes in what Kenyan authorities said was part of a trend in trafficking smaller and lesser-known species. Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, two 19-year-olds who were arrested on April 5 with 5,000 ants at a guest house, appeared distraught during their appearance before a magistrate in Nairobi and were comforted in the courtroom by relatives. They told the magistrate that they were collecting the ants for fun and did not know that it was illegal. In a separate criminal case, Kenyan Dennis
A judge in Bangladesh issued an arrest warrant for the British member of parliament and former British economic secretary to the treasury Tulip Siddiq, who is a niece of former Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina, who was ousted in August last year in a mass uprising that ended her 15-year rule. The Bangladeshi Anti-Corruption Commission has been investigating allegations against Siddiq that she and her family members, including Hasina, illegally received land in a state-owned township project near Dhaka, the capital. Senior Special Judge of Dhaka Metropolitan Zakir Hossain passed the order on Sunday, after considering charges in three separate cases filed
APPORTIONING BLAME: The US president said that there were ‘millions of people dead because of three people’ — Vladimir Putin, Joe Biden and Volodymyr Zelenskiy US President Donald Trump on Monday resumed his attempts to blame Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy for Russia’s invasion, falsely accusing him of responsibility for “millions” of deaths. Trump — who had a blazing public row in the Oval Office with Zelenskiy six weeks ago — said the Ukranian shared the blame with Russian President Vladimir Putin, who ordered the February 2022 invasion, and then-US president Joe Biden. Trump told reporters that there were “millions of people dead because of three people.” “Let’s say Putin No. 1, but let’s say Biden, who had no idea what the hell he was doing, No. 2, and
RSS