The Malaysian military launched a fierce assault yesterday on up to 300 Philippine intruders locked in a three-week deadly standoff that has become the country’s biggest security crisis in years, as their leader vowed they would fight to the death.
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said he had no choice but to unleash the military to try to end an incursion that had already killed 27 people and began when militants invaded to claim Malaysian territory for a past Philippine sultanate.
However, Malaysian National Police Chief Ismail Omar said more than nine hours after the attack began that “mopping up” operations had yet to find any dead militants, and expressed fears that at least some might have slipped away.
Photo: AFP
A day after the Philippines called for restraint, Malaysia launched the assault with fighter jets bombing the standoff village of Tanduo in Sabah State on the northern tip of Borneo island, followed by a ground assault by troops.
“The longer this invasion lasts, it is clear to the authorities that the invaders do not intend to leave Sabah,” Najib said, adding that negotiations with the estimated 100 to 300 intruders had gone nowhere. “The government must take action to safeguard the dignity and sovereignty of the country as required by the people.”
Followers of Jamalul Kiram III, the heir to the Sulu sultanate, have said they were ready to die for the cause and warned more militants were poised to land in Sabah.
“The crown prince, the royal security forces, and the many patriots who landed [in Sabah] voluntarily will fight to the last man protecting their ideals and aspirations,” Kiram said yesterday in Manila.
The group’s willingness to die over a long-dormant territorial dispute has shocked Malaysia. They has been holed up in the village since landing by boat last month in an incursion that highlighted lax Malaysian security and the continuing threat from Islamists in the lawless south of the Philippines.
At least two fighter jets were spotted roaring overhead early yesterday, followed by the thud of loud explosions, a Malaysian reporter about 20km away from the clash told media by phone.
“There was a series of explosions in Tanduo. Intense bombing lasted for about half an hour,” followed by sporadic blasts, he said.
Amid the assault, a reporter at a roadblock 30km from Tanduo saw Malaysian military transport helicopters flying toward the village, as three military trucks with dozens of soldiers and several ambulances also sped toward the scene.
Ismail said he had no firm figure on militant casualties, addinh that Malaysian forces had suffered no casualties.
Philippine President Benigno Aquino III’s spokesman blamed the intruders — followers of 74-year-old Manila-based Islamic leader Jamalul Kiram III — for the assault.
“We’ve done everything we could to prevent this, but in the end, Kiram’s people chose this path,” Aquino spokesman Ricky Carandang said.
After a lengthy standoff, violence erupted in Tanduo on Friday with a shootout that left 12 of the gunmen and two police officers dead.
Another gun battle Saturday in the town of Semporna, hours away by road, left six police and six gunmen dead, raising fears of a wider guerrilla infiltration.
The drama may not end at Tanduo, which is set amid vast oil palm plantations.
Police at the weekend said they were hunting for a group of “foreign” gunmen in another town, but have provided no further updates.
Based in the Philippines’ Sulu Islands, the sultanate once controlled parts of Borneo, including Sabah. Its power faded about a century ago, but its heirs have continued to insist on ownership of resource-rich Sabah and still receive nominal Malaysian payments under a leasing deal originally struck by Western colonial powers.
A deluge of disinformation about a virus called hMPV is stoking anti-China sentiment across Asia and spurring unfounded concerns of renewed lockdowns, despite experts dismissing comparisons with the COVID-19 pandemic five years ago. Agence France-Presse’s fact-checkers have debunked a slew of social media posts about the usually non-fatal respiratory disease human metapneumovirus after cases rose in China. Many of these posts claimed that people were dying and that a national emergency had been declared. Garnering tens of thousands of views, some posts recycled old footage from China’s draconian lockdowns during the COVID-19 pandemic, which originated in the country in late
French police on Monday arrested a man in his 20s on suspicion of murder after an 11-year-old girl was found dead in a wood south of Paris over the weekend in a killing that sparked shock and a massive search for clues. The girl, named as Louise, was found stabbed to death in the Essonne region south of Paris in the night of Friday to Saturday, police said. She had been missing since leaving school on Friday afternoon and was found just a few hundred meters from her school. A police source, who asked not to be named, said that she had been
VIOLENCE: The teacher had depression and took a leave of absence, but returned to the school last year, South Korean media reported A teacher stabbed an eight-year-old student to death at an elementary school in South Korea on Monday, local media reported, citing authorities. The teacher, a woman in her 40s, confessed to the crime after police officers found her and the young girl with stab wounds at the elementary school in the central city of Daejeon on Monday evening, the Yonhap news agency reported. The girl was brought to hospital “in an unconscious state, but she later died,” the report read. The teacher had stab wounds on her neck and arm, which officials determined might have been self-inflicted, the news agency
ISSUE: Some foreigners seek women to give birth to their children in Cambodia, and the 13 women were charged with contravening a law banning commercial surrogacy Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr yesterday thanked Cambodian King Norodom Sihamoni for granting a royal pardon last year to 13 Filipino women who were convicted of illegally serving as surrogate mothers in the Southeast Asian kingdom. Marcos expressed his gratitude in a meeting with Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Manet, who was visiting Manila for talks on expanding trade, agricultural, tourism, cultural and security relations. The Philippines and Cambodia belong to the 10-nation ASEAN, a regional bloc that promotes economic integration but is divided on other issues, including countries whose security alignments is with the US or China. Marcos has strengthened