Muslim militants have killed five soldiers and wounded 23 others in a major ambush by members of a kidnap-for-ransom group, the Philippine military said yesterday.
The soldiers were on Friday searching for hostages taken by the Abu Sayyaf group when fighters armed with guns attacked them on the southern Philippine island of Jolo, regional military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Gerry Besana told reporters.
“The effort is part of our mission to rescue the remaining hostages,” Besana said.
Abu Sayyaf is a loose alliance of several hundred armed militants formed in the 1990s with seed money from Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda network.
The clash was one of the deadliest since an Abu Sayyaf faction joined other foreign and Filipino militants in seizing the southern Philippine city of Marawi last year, leading to a five-month battle that claimed more than 1,100 lives.
Abu Sayyaf is now believed to hold “less than 10” hostages, Besana said.
The group is based in the strife-torn southern islands, but its members in 2016 began to kidnap sailors on the sea between Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines.
The militants have also raided and taken hostages from resorts in the southern Philippines and neighboring Malaysia.
Most of the hostages have been ransomed off for huge amounts of money and several were beheaded, including two Canadian tourists in 2016.
A Dutch birdwatcher abducted on a nearby island in 2012 is believed to be among those still in Abu Sayyaf’s hands.
A Swiss colleague of the Dutchman’s escaped in 2014 after grabbing a kidnapper’s machete and killing him.
The soldiers who survived Friday’s ambush did not see any hostages during the 90-minute clash near the town of Patikul, Besana said.
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