Philippine troops have captured a key bridge leading to the main position of Islamic State group-linked militants in the southern city of Marawi, but they will not stage a major assault and will instead press efforts to rescue civilian hostages, an official said yesterday.
Government troops last week gained control of Mapandi bridge, which leads to Marawi’s interior business district, where only 40 to 60 remaining militants are believed to be holding between 80 and 100 hostages, mostly in a large mosque, military spokesman Brigadier General Restituto Padilla said.
However, a major assault was not imminent, he said.
“We now have direct access to ground zero,” Padilla said at a news conference in Manila, referring to the bridge over Marawi’s Agus River that can be used to rapidly transport troops and combat supplies. “Our main objective is to rescue the hostages.”
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has ordered troops to ensure the safety of the hostages and not launch a massive assault that could endanger the captives even if that prolongs the militant siege, which has already dragged for more than two months.
More than 650 people have died in the violence, including 45 civilians.
Philippine Secretary of National Defense Delfin Lorenzana yesterday expressed fears that the militants, who have been using their hostages as human shields, might force some of the captives to serve as suicide bombers.
“That’s one of the fears of our soldiers — they may let loose the civilians, but force them to carry bombs,” Lorenzana told reporters.
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
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