[AFP] Philippine troops have killed 89 Islamist rebels during more than a week of urban clashes but a final showdown is expected to be ferocious as the gunmen protect their leaders and hold hostages.On Wednesday morning, attack helicopters fired rockets into parts of Marawi that were still controlled by the militants fighting under the black flag of the Islamic State.
Military spokesman Restituto Padilla said 89 rebels have been killed in the fighting and the amount of territory in the city that the remaining gunmen control has been cut to just 10 percent. However he warned of more intense clashes ahead, with the military believing three of the rebels' top leaders were likely still in the city.
Padilla said, "That 10% is most likely the area that is heavily guarded and defended by any armed men if they are protecting any individual of high value."
The rebels are holding an unknown number of civilians hostage. They initially took a priest and up to 14 other people captive at the beginning of the crisis. A video of the priest appeared on social media on Tuesday, in which he repeated the rebels' demands to withdraw and said his captors were holding 240 people hostage.
Padilla said the release of the footage showed the rebels were becoming increasingly desperate and said security forces would not back down. He said, "They are trapped, they are contained, they are in areas that they will never come up alive unless they surrender."
Another major complication is the safety of about 2,000 residents who the local government said remained trapped in the rebel-controlled areas.
Laundrywoman Jenita Abanilla arrived exhausted and famished at an evacuation center in Marawi on Wednesday afternoon after heavily armed police rescued her on Wednesday. She said, "We covered the mouths of our children. We were afraid the gunmen would come in and kill us," adding that she also feared being hit by bombs.
Padilla said the rebels had killed 19 civilians but insisted that military airstrikes had not killed any of the trapped residents. Twenty-one members of the security forces had also died, Padilla said, bringing the combined death toll to 129.