Photos released by the Western Mindanao Command to The Mindanao Examiner regional newspaper show Marine Lt. Gen. Rustico Guerrero, chief of the military’s Western Mindanao Command, and Army Maj. Gen. Felicito Virgilio Trinidad, Jr., pinning medals to soldiers wounded in fierce fighting with Abu Sayyaf rebels in Basilan province in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.
ZAMBOANGA CITY (Mindanao Examiner / Apr. 13, 2014) – Dozens of Abu Sayyafs rebels have escaped a massive military assault in the southern Philippine province of Basilan that left two soldiers dead and 28 more wounded.
Security officials insisted that up to a dozen rebels were slain in the fierce fighting in the villages of Ungkaya Pukan and Tipo-Tipo town, but troops had not recovered any single body of Abu Sayyaf gunmen in the areas.
Officials said they learned about the enemy casualties from the villagers themselves and that the military is verifying the reports. “The reports came from the populace and we are still verifying all these information,” Marine Captain Maria Rowena Muyuela, a spokeswoman for the Western Mindanao Command, told the regional newspaper Mindanao Examiner.
She said initially they got reports that 5 rebels were slain and eventually increased to 12. “Right now, there are no more operations and troops have returned to barracks,” she said.
The army said the operation targeted Abu Sayyaf leaders Puruji Indama, Nurhassan Jamiri and Isnilon Hapilon, but there were no reports about them or whether they had been killed or not. Some 200 soldiers had took part in the operation following reports that rebels had been extorting money and harassing laborers working on a government road project near Tipo-Tipo town.
Army Captain Jefferson Mamauag, a spokesman for the 1st Infantry Division, also denied news reports attributed to him by an international news agency, as saying that three members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front allegedly fighting alongside the military were also killed.
He was also quoted as saying that 7 Abu Sayyaf rebels were slain in the fighting, a report Mamauag said he did not tell the news agency. “I don’t know why I was quoted, but I never told that news agency or reporters all those reports,” he said in a separate interview.
There was no immediate confirmation from the MILF, the country’s largest Muslim rebel group which recently signed a peace deal with Manila.
The military also tagged the rebels as behind the spate of terrorism and ransom kidnappings in Basilan, one of five provinces under the restive Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, and other parts of the southern Philippines.
Lt. Gen. Rustico Guerrero, chief of the Western Mindanao Command, and Army Maj. Gen. Felicito Virgilio Trinidad, Jr., also pinned medals to soldiers wounded in the fighting and are now recuperating at the Camp Navarro Hospital in Zamboanga City. (Mindanao Examiner)
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