[BenarNews] Philippine government forces killed two suspected 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...
Group Death Eaters in separate incidents in the southern Sulu Islands on Friday, including a unit sub-leader and one linked to kidnappings of Europeans and an Indonesian several years ago, military officials said.
The killings brought to 17 the number of suspected members 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 Allaharound with every other sentence, but to hear western pols talk they're not
reallyMoslems....
-linked ASG slain in a series of raids and gunbattles in the southern Philippines during the month of November. They include seven suspects who were killed by government forces during a chase at sea off the Sulu chain on Nov. 3.
On Friday, a unit from the Marine Battalion Landing Team 1 was attacked at dawn by an Abu Sayyaf unit led by Hatib Munap Binda near Panamao town in Sulu province, the military said in an incident report.
A "30-minute firefight ensued resulting in the death of Binda," and the wounding of several others, said Lt. Gen. Corleto Vinluan, the military chief in the southern Philippines.
"The troops penetrated the encounter site and recovered the body of Abu Sayyaf group sub-leader Binda," Vinluan said, adding that the Death Eater were forced to retreat, taking their maimed comrades with them.
He said an M16 and an M14 assault rifles were recovered.
About an hour later, another team of marines clashed with an Abu Sayyaf faction elsewhere in the region, in a gunbattle that killed a suspected krazed killer identified as Bensio Barahama.
Binda was identified as an associate of Abu Sayyaf sub-leader Alhabsy Misaya who led a spate of kidnap-for-ransom activities in the southern Philippines along the borders with Malaysia and Indonesia, according to military intelligence records.
Misaya was killed in a clash in 2017. Apart from kidnappings, he was also blamed for a kaboom that killed an American soldier in 2002.
Barahama meanwhile was involved in the kidnapping of two bird watchers, Swiss national Lorenzo Vinciguerre and Dutch national Ewold Horn, the military said.
They were kidnapped on February 2012 along with a Filipino guide who was able to escape hours later near the island of Tawi-Tawi. Vinciguerre beat feet from ASG captivity two years later but Horn was killed in May 2019 as he tried to flee in the middle of a clash between his captors and troops.
Vinluan said Barahama had led efforts to kidnap 10 Filipinos who were held captive at different times and subsequently freed after ransom payments.
On Thursday night, a third Abu Sayyaf suspect was captured on nearby Basilan
...Basilan is a rugged, jungle-covered island in the southern Philippines. It is a known stronghold of the Abu Sayyaf, bandidos, and maybe even orcs. Most people with any sense travel with armed escorts...
Island, considered the birth place of the Abu Sayyaf in the mid-1990s.
The suspect was identified as Ranger Siason (alias Abu Ranger), said Lt. Col. Homer Dumalag, chief of the Isabela City Police Office on Basilan. In arresting Siason, he said police and regional intelligence operatives recovered ammunition and explosives, along with a black Islamic State flag.
13 November
[BenarNews] Military officials reported that a suspected Abu Sayyaf bad boy was killed Friday during a raid of a hideout in Basilan province, according to the state-run Philippine News Agency (PNA).
The suspect, identified as Hasid Salajim, was killed during the 5:30 a.m. raid, Lt. Gen. Corleto Vinluan of the Western Mindanao Command in Zamboanga told PNA.
Apart from the bombing attack in General Santos, Bulacon was wanted for crimes in South Cotabato, a mostly agricultural province in Mindanao Island where forces of Evil have been recruiting and training fighters over the past several years, Uy said.
"Terrorists have no place here in South-Central Mindanao, so it might be better for you to surrender to the government," Uy said. "This successful operation can be notably credited to the strong cooperation of communities who are tired of this cycle of violence."
ABU SAYYAF SUB-COMMANDER CAUGHT
On Thursday, a mid-level Abu Sayyaf Group leader was captured in a mountainous area in Patikul, a town in the far southern Sulu Islands. Amah Ullah, an ASG sub-leader, was taken into custody after being injured in a clash with troops, who were searching for several Indonesians being held hostage by members of the IS-linked bad boy group, authorities said.
Ullah, who was treated at a military hospital in Jolo town, was to be questioned.
"According to the troops, Ullah refused to surrender and wanted to be killed, but the soldiers instead provided him with first aid," Vinluan said.
The operations came shortly after the military killed seven members of a pro-IS faction of the Abu Sayyaf, including a bad boy being groomed to be its new leader, during a high-seas chase off Sulu province on Nov. 3.
And from 9 November:
[BenarNews] A suspected Abu Sayyaf militant, who was wanted for involvement in the 2016 abduction of six Indonesian fishing crew members, died in a shootout with government forces in southern Zamboanga Sibugay province over the weekend, Philippine police said Monday.Members of the police’s Special Action Force killed the suspect, Salip Adzhar Alijam, when he opened fire during a raid in Tungawan town on Saturday, regional police director Brig. Gen. Jesus Cambay told BenarNews.
"The suspect fired at the approaching police forces, which triggered a brief shootout that resulted in his death," Cambay said.
The security forces’ operation was based on a warrant issued against Aijam for illegal possession of explosives. He was also known by the aliases Aya and Alip Adjal Hamsa Grandad.
A sidearm and other weapons, including a fragmentation grenade and ammunition, were recovered from the slain suspect.
Cambay said Alijam was a bad boy from the Abu Sayyaf faction led by Alhabsy Misaya, whose group was behind cross-border raids and kidnappings in nearby Malaysian waters. Misaya was slain in a clash with troops three years ago.
One of the six Indonesian captives, Herman bin Manggak, had positively identified Alijam as being among the Abu Sayyaf men who kidnapped them in August 2016 in waters in Sabah, a state in Malaysian Borneo. The kidnappers took the captives to the Sulu archipelago, a stronghold of the gunnies in the far southern Philippines.
The Indonesians were among a dozen hostages kidnapped by Abu Sayyaf in 2015 and 2016. Three westerners — Canadians Robert Hall and John Ridsdel and Norwegian Kjartan Sekkingstad — were also held hostage, along with a Filipino woman.
Sekkingstad and the woman were later freed separately after reportedly paying an undisclosed amount of ransom, but Hall and Ridsdel had their heads chopped off by the kidnappers after their relatives refused to pay the ransom.
Manggak and the other Indonesians were either released or escaped.
The waters that separate the southern Philippines from next-door neighbors Malaysia and Indonesia have been notorious for kidnappings carried out at sea by Abu Sayyaf bad boys.
The last such case was the Jan. 16 abduction of five Indonesians in waters off an island in Sabah. An Abu Sayyaf faction is currently holding four of them captive, while a fifth Indonesian, identified as La Baa, was slain in September by his captors.
On Sept. 30, three suspected Abu Sayyaf members, including one involved in the abduction of the fishermen, surrendered to government troops in Sulu.
Since 2016, at least 54 Indonesian nationals have been targeted in 16 maritime kidnappings, including in Sabah waters, an official at the Indonesia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said earlier this year.
In 2017, the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesian launched trilateral patrols aimed at preventing acts of piracy and kidnappings at sea along their common maritime boundaries.