ZAMBOANGA CITY (Mindanao Examiner / Apr. 5, 2012) – Three government militias were killed and 7 others wounded in Thursday attack by Abu Sayyaf militants in the restive southern Philippine province of Basilan, officials said.
Officials said one of the attackers was also killed in the fire fight that erupted in Tumahubong village in Sumisip town where the militant group tied by authorities to al-Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiya is actively operating.
“Three were killed and seven more are wounded in the Abu Sayyaf attack. There is an operation going on against this terrorist group,” Colonel Ricardo Visaya, commander of military forces in the province, told the Mindanao Examiner.
Visaya said the militias were deployed in the town to guard the workers of the Tumahubong Agrarian Reform Beneficiary Development Cooperative. He said the wounded were rushed to the army base in Basilan where doctors provided them first aid and then airlifted to Zamboanga City for further medication.
Visaya has tagged Puruji Indama as behind the attack. “We still don’t know the motive of the attack,” he said.
Police did not give any statement about the attack and the provincial commander Alexis Lineses ignored queries from journalists.
The Abu Sayyaf has previously attacked workers of the cooperative for its failure to pay extortion money to the militants blamed for the spate of terrorism and kidnappings in Basilan, one of five provinces under the Muslim autonomous region.
Indama’s group is believed to be holding a kidnapped Australian adventurer Warren Rodwell, who was seized in December last year at the seaside town of Ipil in Zamboanga del Sur province. (Mindanao Examiner)
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