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2019-06-29 Southeast Asia
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Three Soldiers Killed in Philippines' Restive South, ISIS claims attack
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[AnNahar] An attack on a special Philippine army counter-terrorism unit left three soldiers dead and nine others maimed in the southern Philippines on Friday, military spokesmen and witnesses told AFP.
Unknown suspects targeted the unit's temporary headquarters on the island of Jolo, a stronghold of Islamic State
 ...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that they were al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're really very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not really Moslems....
-linked Abu Sayyaf
...also known as al-Harakat al-Islamiyya, an Islamist terror group based in Jolo, Basilan and Zamboanga. Since its inception in the early 1990s, the group has carried out bombings, kidnappings, murders, head choppings, and extortion in their uniquely Islamic attempt to set up an independent Moslem province in the Philippines. Abu Sayyaf forces probably number less than 300 cadres. The group is closely allied with remnants of Indonesia's Jemaah Islamiya and has loose ties with MILF and MNLF who sometimes provide cannon fodder...
turbans.
"It was a bomb and a firefight," army front man Colonel Ramon Zagala told AFP, adding the attackers' identities were not immediately known.
An AFP news hound on the scene saw a blood-soaked man slumped on a tricycle on a street also stained with blood in front of the temporary headquarters of the army's 1,500-member First Brigade Combat team.
The Philippines has renewed its campaign against the Death Eaters in Jolo this year after at least one suspected jacket wallah attacked the island's Roman Catholic cathedral, killing 21 people.
Major Arvin Arcinas, the region's military front man, said three army members were killed in Friday's attack, with nine other soldiers were maimed.
He said he could not confirm if there were civilian casualties and could not say what kind of explosives were used.
Jolo and other remote areas of the southern Philippines are home to numerous gangs including the Abu Sayyaf, which is notorious for kidnappings and bombings.
The turbans, who demand large ransoms and have beheaded several hostages, have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State.
The army deployed the specially trained unit in the Jolo town of Indanan four weeks ago.
In the same week, a Dutch birdwatcher held for years by the Abu Sayyaf was killed in Jolo during a firefight between his kidnappers and soldiers sent to rescue him.
ISIS claims responsibility for Philippine army camp bombing that left 5 dead
[Reuters via Task & Purpose] An explosion at a military base in the restive southern Philippines on Friday killed five people, including three soldiers, and wounded nine others in what Islamic State said was an attack by its suicide bombers.
The military said the blast occurred at around noon at a base on Jolo island, a stronghold of the Abu Sayyaf, a splintered militant network notorious for kidnapping and piracy and for its pledge of allegiance to Islamic State.
Islamic State said via its Amaq news agency that its fighters had infiltrated the base strapped with explosives and killed or wounded 100 soldiers. It posted an image of two young men standing beside a black Islamic State flag, wearing what appeared to be vests designed to hold explosives.
Neither the claim nor the authenticity of the photograph could be immediately verified.
The incident will be a major setback for Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte's goal of wiping out Abu Sayyaf, for which he has created a special infantry division on Jolo to be comprised of 4,500 troops by 2022.
There was no immediate comment from Duterte's office. 
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Posted by trailing wife 2019-06-29 00:00||
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File under: Abu Sayyaf (ISIS)
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