Philippine troops and Muslim rebels worked together in a brief, rare alliance yesterday, forcing a group of kidnappers to abandon a Chinese tourist who was abducted in the country’s troubled south, officials said.
Government forces and the 11,000-strong Moro Islamic Liberation Front have engaged in sporadic but fierce clashes since August, when Malaysian-brokered peace talks collapsed.
Government officials and the rebels, however, pledged to cooperate to free Afen Ma Wu, North Cotabato Governor Jesus Sacdalan said.
The two sides have agreed in the past to fight criminals and terrorists together. They formed a joint committee to oversee those collaborations that still exist despite renewed clashes.
The 10 kidnappers abandoned Wu and fled after troops and Moro rebels blocked their access to a rebel stronghold, Sacdalan said.
The kidnappers — who escaped and were being pursued by troops — belong to a group called Pentagon, which includes former Moro rebels and local gangsters, Sacdalan said.
Wu, who suffered only some bruises and mosquito bites, was turned over to relatives after a brief medical checkup, Sacdalan said, adding that no ransom was paid.
“We’re really happy with this collaboration that led to the victim’s safe release without a shot being fired,” Sacdalan said.
Rebel spokesman Eid Kabalu said the cooperation showed “that we can still work together side by side with authorities despite the stalled peace process. If the objective is to fight criminality, we can work hand in hand.”
The 24-year-old Wu from China’s Fujian Province was visiting relatives in North Cotabato when two gunmen dragged her into a car on Wednesday.
The police, backed by army troops, immediately launched a search.
Her abductors tried to bring her to a marshland on the border of Maguindanao and North Cotabato provinces where the Moro rebels have a stronghold, but they were blocked by their former comrades.
The kidnappers backed off, but later ran into army troops positioned along a road, prompting them to abandon Wu, Kabalu said.
The Pentagon group has been blamed for several abductions in recent years in the central region of southern Mindanao Island, where the Moro rebels maintain strongholds.
But there has been no indication the crimes were linked to a spike in kidnappings for ransom blamed on the Abu Sayyaf, a smaller but more violent al-Qaeda-linked group.
Two medieval fortresses face each other across the Narva River separating Estonia from Russia on Europe’s eastern edge. Once a symbol of cooperation, the “Friendship Bridge” connecting the two snow-covered banks has been reinforced with rows of razor wire and “dragon’s teeth” anti-tank obstacles on the Estonian side. “The name is kind of ironic,” regional border chief Eerik Purgel said. Some fear the border town of more than 50,0000 people — a mixture of Estonians, Russians and people left stateless after the fall of the Soviet Union — could be Russian President Vladimir Putin’s next target. On the Estonian side of the bridge,
Civil society leaders and members of a left-wing coalition yesterday filed impeachment complaints against Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte, restarting a process sidelined by the Supreme Court last year. Both cases accuse Duterte of misusing public funds during her term as education secretary, while one revives allegations that she threatened to assassinate former ally Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The filings come on the same day that a committee in the House of Representatives was to begin hearings into impeachment complaints against Marcos, accused of corruption tied to a spiraling scandal over bogus flood control projects. Under the constitution, an impeachment by the
Jeremiah Kithinji had never touched a computer before he finished high school. A decade later, he is teaching robotics, and even took a team of rural Kenyans to the World Robotics Olympiad in Singapore. In a classroom in Laikipia County — a sparsely populated grasslands region of northern Kenya known for its rhinos and cheetahs — pupils are busy snapping together wheels, motors and sensors to assemble a robot. Guiding them is Kithinji, 27, who runs a string of robotics clubs in the area that have taken some of his pupils far beyond the rural landscapes outside. In November, he took a team
Exiled Tibetans began a unique global election yesterday for a government representing a homeland many have never seen, as part of a democratic exercise voters say carries great weight. From red-robed Buddhist monks in the snowy Himalayas, to political exiles in megacities across South Asia, to refugees in Australia, Europe and North America, voting takes place in 27 countries — but not China. “Elections ... show that the struggle for Tibet’s freedom and independence continues from generation to generation,” said candidate Gyaltsen Chokye, 33, who is based in the Indian hill-town of Dharamsala, headquarters of the government-in-exile, the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA). It
RSS