ZAMBOANGA CITY – The Philippine military on Tuesday announced the killing of two notorious Abu Sayyaf militants tagged as behind cross-border kidnappings in the rich Malaysian state of Sabah.
Major Filemon Tan, a spokesman for the Western Mindanao Command, said military forces killed Nixon Muktadil and his brother Brown Muktadil on Tambulian Island off Sulu’s Pata town.
He said the brothers were behind the kidnappings of at least 26 Indonesian and Malaysian nationals, mostly crew members of slow-moving tugboats in Sabah near the Filipino border in Tawi-Tawi province.
“The Muktadil brothers were involved in a series of kidnappings of twenty-six Indonesians and Malaysians at the high seas of the boundaries of Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines,” Tan said.
Details of the military operations were not made available by the military or whether Malaysia was involved in the raid.
But Tan said the killings of the two men were a big blow to the Abu Sayyaf. “The death of the Muktadil brothers is a major blow to the group of Abu Sayyaf sub-leader Alhabsy Misaya because they served as the sea guides and navigators during conduct of kidnappings at the high seas,” he said.
The bodies of the two brothers were handed over to the police in Sulu, one of 5 provinces under the Muslim autonomous region.
There was no immediate statement from the Malaysian government on the killings of the Muktadil brothers. (Mindanao Examiner)
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