Philippine forces yesterday rescued two of three Indonesian hostages after a gunbattle with their captors from the Muslim militant group Abu Sayyaf in the southern jungles, a regional military commander said.
A soldier and a militant were killed in two clashes at dawn that allowed troops to rescue the two Indonesians in the mountainous hinterlands off Panamao town in Sulu province, Lieutenant General Cirilito Sobejana said.
Troops, backed by rocket-firing helicopters, were pursuing the militants in an effort to rescue the third Indonesian, he said.
“We have cordoned the area so we are very optimistic that we will recover the remaining Indonesian,” Sobejana told reporters.
The Indonesian fishermen were kidnapped at gunpoint by the ransom-seeking militants in September off Malaysia’s Sabah state and taken to their jungle bases in Sulu, despite tighter security by Malaysian, Philippine and Indonesian forces to prevent such abductions along their maritime border.
Military offensives against militants, such as the Abu Sayyaf, have reduced abductions in the past few years, but they continue to occur.
Abu Sayyaf militants have staged kidnappings in and off Sabah in the past few years, sparking a regional security alarm.
The rescue of the Indonesians came after the Philippine military inflicted successive battle defeats recently to the Abu Sayyaf, which is recognized as a terrorist organization by the US and the Philippines.
Troops have killed a “high-value,” but little-known Abu Sayyaf commander, Talha Jumsah, near Sulu’s mountainous Patikul town.
Jumsah acted as a key link between the Islamic State (IS) group and local extremists and helped set up a series of deadly suicide attacks in Sulu this year, officials said.
The Abu Sayyaf emerged in the late 1980s as an offshoot of the decades-long Muslim separatist insurgency in the south of the largely Roman Catholic nation.
After losing its commanders early in battle, the Abu Sayyaf rapidly degenerated into a small, but brutal group blamed for ransom kidnappings, beheadings and other acts of banditry.
Most of its militant factions have pledged allegiance to the IS.
An endangered baby pygmy hippopotamus that shot to social media stardom in Thailand has become a lucrative source of income for her home zoo, quadrupling its ticket sales, the institution said Thursday. Moo Deng, whose name in Thai means “bouncy pork,” has drawn tens of thousands of visitors to Khao Kheow Open Zoo this month. The two-month-old pygmy hippo went viral on TikTok and Instagram for her cheeky antics, inspiring merchandise, memes and even craft tutorials on how to make crocheted or cake-based Moo Dengs at home. A zoo spokesperson said that ticket sales from the start of September to Wednesday reached almost
TIGHTENING: Zhu Hengpeng, who worked for an influential think tank, has reportedly not been seen in public since making disparaging remarks on WeChat A leading Chinese economist at a government think tank has reportedly disappeared after being disciplined for criticizing Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) in a private chat group. Zhu Hengpeng (朱恆鵬), 55, is believed to have made disparaging remarks about China’s economy, and potentially about the Chinese leader specifically, in a private WeChat group. Zhu was subsequently detained in April and put under investigation, the Wall Street Journal reported. Zhu worked for the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) for more than 20 years, most recently as the Institute of Economics deputy director and director of the Public Policy Research Center. He
‘BARBAROUS ACTS’: The captain of the fishing vessel said that people in checkered clothes beat them with iron bars and that he fell unconscious for about an hour Ten Vietnamese fishers were violently robbed in the South China Sea, state media reported yesterday, with an official saying the attackers came from Chinese-flagged vessels. The men were reportedly beaten with iron bars and robbed of thousands of dollars of fish and equipment on Sunday off the Paracel Islands (Xisha Islands, 西沙群島), which Taiwan claims, as do Vietnam, China, Brunei, Malaysia and the Philippines. Vietnamese media did not identify the nationalities of the attackers, but Phung Ba Vuong, an official in central Quang Ngai province, told reporters: “They were Chinese, [the boats had] Chinese flags.” Four of the 10-man Vietnamese crew were rushed
CHINESE ICBM: The missile landed near the EEZ of French Polynesia, much to the surprise and concern of the president, who sent a letter of protest to Beijing Fijian President Ratu Wiliame Katonivere called for “respect for our region” and a stop to missile tests in the Pacific Ocean, after China launched an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). In a speech to the UN General Assembly in New York on Thursday, Katonivere recalled the Pacific Ocean’s history as a nuclear weapons testing ground, and noted Wednesday’s rare launch by China of an ICBM. “There was a unilateral test firing of a ballistic missile into the Pacific Ocean. We urge respect for our region and call for cessation of such action,” he said. The ICBM, carrying a dummy warhead, was launched by the
RSS