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| Southeast Asia |
| Filippino troops kill 4 Abu Sayyaf |
| 2005-11-28 |
| Philippine soldiers killed four suspected members of a Muslim militant group linked with al Qaeda in an operation to flush out militants from the remote southwestern island of Jolo, an army general said on Monday. The Abu Sayyaf militants were resting in a wooded area when an army patrol hunting their one-armed, horse-riding local commander ran into them and opened fire. "The rebels did not know what hit them," Brigadier-General Alexander Aleo told reporters. Four were killed on the spot, while a few others managed to escape, he said. Hundreds of troops are battling about 150 Abu Sayyaf rebels and rogue members of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), a larger Muslim separatist group that signed an Indonesian-brokered peace deal with the government in 1996. Aleo said troops had found three abandoned rebel camps in the mountains near Indanan town and seized bomb-making materials and anti-tank projectiles used to make crude mines. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |