Philippine troops captured an Muslim militant training camp after a 10-day battle, as part of operations to clear insurgents from a remote jungle region, officials said.
The offensive against the Maute group, one of several Filipino Muslim armed organizations that have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group, left four soldiers dead and 15 others wounded, a Philippine military commander told a reporter.
Surrounded by swamps and a lowland tropical rainforest in the small, Muslim-populated farming town of Butig, more than 800km south of Manila, the camp’s structures were riddled with large bullet holes that soldiers said were caused by machine-gun fire used to flush out the militants.
Photo: AFP
Soldiers said they killed dozens of militants, but there was no sign of dead bodies when the military allowed journalists into the area on Friday.
Unexploded improvised explosive devices, a grenade launcher, a rebel uniform and a black Islamic State group flag were all that were left in the wooden huts and concrete-reinforced trenches, which were used by the militants, army Colonel Roseller Murillo said.
“The Maute group is believed to be on the run and in hiding, [but] the military will fully enforce the law if they initiate other terrorist activities in the area,” Murillo said.
The offensive was launched after the militants moved back into territory that the military secured during clashes in February, they said.
Once described by the military as a small-time extortion gang, the Maute group attacked a remote army outpost in Butig in February, triggering a week of fighting that the military said left six soldiers and at least 12 militants dead.
The group, believed to have fewer than 100 fighters, in April blew up power transmission towers, and abducted and beheaded two employees of a local sawmill.
Murillo said the latest military offensive began on May 24, with the fighting displacing about 2,000 residents.
The southern Philippines has been plagued by a Muslim separatist insurgency for more than four decades, with the conflict leaving more than 120,000 people dead.
PHISHING: The con might appear convincing, as the scam e-mails can coincide with genuine messages from Apple saying you have run out of storage For a while you have been getting messages from Apple saying “your iCloud storage is full.” They say you have exceeded your storage plan, so documents are no longer being backed up, and photos you take are not being uploaded. You have been resisting Apple’s efforts to get you to pay a minimum of ￡0.99 (US$1.33) a month for more storage, but it seems that you cannot keep putting off the inevitable: You have received an e-mail which says your iCloud account has been blocked, and your photos and videos would be deleted very soon. To keep them you need
For two decades, researchers observed members of the Ngogo chimpanzee group of Kibale National Park in Uganda spend their days eating fruits and leaves, resting, traveling and grooming in their tropical rainforest abode, but this stable community then fractured and descended into years of deadly violence. The researchers are now describing the first clearly documented example of a group of wild chimpanzees splitting into two separate factions, with one launching a series of coordinated attacks against the other. Adult males and infants were targeted, with 28 deaths. “Biting, pounding the victim with their hands, dragging them, kicking them — mostly adult males,
The Israeli military has demolished entire villages as part of its invasion of south Lebanon, rigging homes with explosives and razing them to the ground in massive remote detonations. The Guardian reviewed three videos posted by the Israeli military and on social media, which showed Israel carrying out mass detonations in the villages of Taybeh, Naqoura and Deir Seryan along the Israel-Lebanon border. Lebanese media has reported more mass detonations in other border villages, but satellite imagery was not readily available to verify these claims. The demolitions came after Israeli Minister of Defense Israel Katz called for the destruction of
SUPERFAN: The Japanese PM played keyboard in a Deep Purple tribute band in middle school and then switched to drums at university, she told the British rock band Legendary British rock band Deep Purple yesterday made Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s day with a brief visit to their high-profile superfan as they returned to the nation they first toured more than half a century ago. Takaichi’s reputation as an amateur drummer, and a fan of hard rock and heavy metal has been well documented, and she has referred to Deep Purple as one of her favorite bands along with the likes of Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden. “You are my god,” a giddy Takaichi said in English to Deep Purple drummer Ian Paice, presenting him with a set of made-in-Japan
RSS