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2021-05-19 Southeast Asia
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Southern Philippines: Govt Troops Kill 5 Suspected Militants in Weekend Clashes
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[BenarNews] Five suspected members of Filipino bad boy groups with links to 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....
snuffies were killed in separate festivities with government forces in the southern Philippines over the weekend, the military said Monday.
Government troops on patrol in the town of Sumisip on Basilan
Continued from Page 1
...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 engaged 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 (ASG) gunnies in a 30-minute, starting around 7:40 a.m. Sunday, said Lt. Gen. Corleto Vinluan, chief of the Western Mindanao Command (WestMinCom).
"Two on the enemy’s side were killed while a third was killed in a follow-up operation," Vinluan told BenarNews. "Our offensives will continue."
Meanwhile earlier on Sunday, soldiers killed two suspected gunnies linked to the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters
...a MILF splinter group aligned with the Islamic State...
(BIFF) in Datu Paglas, a town on Mindanao Island, in the military’s latest clash with members of the group since late April.
The bodies of the dead Abu Sayyaf button men in Basilan were recovered and turned over to local officials, WestMinCom said.
The festivities occurred after President Rodrigo Duterte visited the south last week to rally officials of a Moslem autonomous region to increase efforts to rein in the bad boys. The president warned local officials that he would be forced to launch an all-out offensive against the BIFF gunnies if they failed to persuade them to end the attacks.
Army Maj. Gen. Juvymax Uy, commander of the 6th Division, said government troops suffered no casualties during Sunday’s shootout in Datu Paglas, and recovered the BIFF bad boys’ bodies.
"I directed more troops to reinforce the engaged units and establish a blockade on the enemy withdrawal routes to ensure that no terrorist will escape from the pursuing forces," Uy said, noting that soldiers seized weapons and ammunition. "Two gunnies were slain."
Previously, the military had said that two women linked to BIFF members died when a bomb prematurely went kaboom! on April 28. The women were traveling with BIFF front man Abu Jihad, who was able to escape, officials said. On May 12, troops conducting a dawn patrol near Datu Paglas killed four BIFF members, according to an army front man.
Since January, the military has killed 41 BIFF suspects while 48 of the gunnies have surrendered, according to WestMinCom.
BIFF is an offshoot of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, which ended a decades-long separatist insurgency when it signed a peace deal with Manila in 2014. The MILF controls the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Moslem Mindanao.
The BIFF is divided into several factions, one of which has pledged allegiance to IS while the others are focused on their separatist ideology, officials said.
Basilan is a small island and the birthplace of the Abu Sayyaf, which means "bearers of the sword."
One faction of ASG, led by Isnilon Hapilon, had pledged allegiance to IS. In 2017, it laid siege to Marawi, a city in the southern Philippines, with an aim of establishing a caliphate. Hapilon, along with other commanders, died during the five-month siege.
Since then, authorities have blamed the Abu Sayyaf for planning a suicide kaboom in Jolo, the capital of Sulu province, which killed 14 people in August 2020. A year before that attack, in January 2019, an Indonesian couple killed themselves and 21 others in a suicide kaboom at Jolo’s Catholic cathedral.
Since the start of 2021, WestMinCom says it has killed four ASG suspects and captured one of them, while 13 others have surrendered. 
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Posted by trailing wife 2021-05-19 00:00||
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