A South Korean man who was kidnapped by Muslim extremists in the southern Philippines in January has been found dead, police and military officials said yesterday.
The hostage, Hong Nwi-seong, whose age was given as 74, was discovered in the town of Patikul on the strife-torn island of Jolo on Saturday, more than nine months after he was seized by members of Abu Sayyaf, said Brigadier General Alan Arrojado, commander of a special anti-terror task force.
Arrojado said the victim was not killed, but that Abu Sayyaf had taken his body to the area “after the subject’s death due to severe illness.”
His illness was not disclosed, but local military spokesman Captain Antonio Bulao said the South Korean had been reported to be sick over the past few weeks and had died three to five days ago.
The victim was seized from his home in the Zamboanga Peninsula by armed men on Jan. 24 and was later reported to be in the hands of Abu Sayyaf commanders, the military said.
Details of his confinement and efforts to free him were kept quiet to avoid endangering the hostage.
A South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs official, who declined to be identified, had earlier confirmed the death, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported.
It identified the victim as a “74-year-old ... surnamed Hong,” adding that “if the body turns out to be our national, we will investigate with the Philippines authorities on how he died and in what circumstances.”
Abu Sayyaf has been blamed for the Philippines’ deadliest terror attacks, including the kidnapping for ransom of foreigners, some of whom they killed.
The group is believed to be behind the recent kidnapping of three Westerners and a Filipina taken in September and the abduction of an Italian restaurant owner last month, all from the southern Philippines.
They are also believed to be already holding a Dutch bird watcher, two Malaysians and a Filipino boy.
RIGHTS FEARS: A protester said Beijing would use the embassy to catch and send Hong Kongers to China, while a lawmaker said Chinese agents had threatened Britons Hundreds of demonstrators on Saturday protested at a site earmarked for Beijing’s controversial new embassy in London over human rights and security concerns. The new embassy — if approved by the British government — would be the “biggest Chinese embassy in Europe,” one lawmaker said earlier. Protester Iona Boswell, a 40-year-old social worker, said there was “no need for a mega embassy here” and that she believed it would be used to facilitate the “harassment of dissidents.” China has for several years been trying to relocate its embassy, currently in the British capital’s upmarket Marylebone district, to the sprawling historic site in the
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
BACK TO BATTLE: North Korean soldiers have returned to the front lines in Russia’s Kursk region after earlier reports that Moscow had withdrawn them following heavy losses Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy on Friday pored over a once-classified map of vast deposits of rare earths and other critical minerals as part of a push to appeal to US President Donald Trump’s penchant for a deal. The US president, whose administration is pressing for a rapid end to Ukraine’s war with Russia, on Monday said he wanted Ukraine to supply the US with rare earths and other minerals in return for financially supporting its war effort. “If we are talking about a deal, then let’s do a deal, we are only for it,” Zelenskiy said, emphasizing Ukraine’s need for security guarantees