|
The military chief on Sunday gave the go-ahead for an
offensive to crush Abu Sayyaf extremists in Basilan and Sulu.
“That’s the order, go with
the offensive against the Abu Sayaff… in Basilan and Sulu,”
Armed Forces chief of staff, Gen. Hermogenes Esperon, told reporters
following a command conference in Jolo with military leaders and
Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro, ABS-CBN reported on its website.
Teodoro said the government would
help evacuate affected residents. “[We are] coordinating with
[the] local government to avoid human cost,” he said. As Esperon
gave the order, ABS-CBN learned that units of the Navy, Marines,
Scout Rangers, Army and Air Force were poised in Basilan to launch
attacks particularly in the towns of Tipo-Tipo and Al-Barka, where
clashes last month left behind heavy military casualties.
Elements of the Moro Islamic
Liberation Front in Basilan took part in the July 10 battle that
resulted in the deaths and mutilation of 14 Marines.
Esperon, who arrived in Jolo on a
C-130 troop transport plane along with his senior officers, said the
situation in Jolo appeared to be calm as troop reinforcements
continued to arrive to bolster what the government has described as
a “strategy to win the peace,” rather than “an act of
vengeance.”
An extra 1,000 troops have been
ordered into Jolo where 5,000 are already engaged in the hunt for
militants believed to members of the Abu Sayyaf and the MNLF.
Earlier, President Arroyo ordered
the Army chief, Gen. Romeo Tolentino, to relocate to Zamboanga. The
President said the intensified operation was not “an act of
vengeance but ... a strategy to win the peace.”
“We cannot allow terrorists to
hold the south hostage to their agenda of mayhem,” she said.
Jolo, part of the Sulu
archipelago in the South, has been the scene of some of the worst
fighting in decades between the military and Muslim militants.
Last week 26 soldiers were killed
in clashes with the Abu Sayyaf in Jolo.
The fighting in Jolo has seen
more than 10,000 people flee their homes in the towns of Maimbung,
Indanan and Parang, for fear of getting caught in the crossfire,
said Amilhabar Amilasan, a special presidential assistant for Jolo.
Jolo brigade commander, Col.
Anthony Supnet, said his troops would continue to hunt the gunmen
even though the militants had broken up into smaller groups and
scattered into the hinterlands.
Supnet said the militants were
members of the MNLF, a group that had signed a peace accord with the
government in 1996, and the Abu Sayyaf, an extremist group not
covered by the accord.
He alleged that among the rebels
hiding with the MNLF forces were Dulmatin and Umar Patek, two wanted
members of the Southeast Asian terrorist group Jemaah Islamiah.
“The terrorists are in the
territory of the MNLF: the Abu Sayyaf and Dulmatin and Umar Patek.
They were sighted in that area,” he said.
Dulmatin and Umar Patek are
accused of involvement in the 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202
people. The Abu Sayyaf are blamed for the worst terror attacks in
the Philippines, mostly targeting Christians and foreigners.
Both the Jemaah Islamiah and the
Abu Sayyaf have been linked by local and foreign intelligence
services to the al-Qaeda network.
The military estimates the Abu
Sayyaf, which has been blamed for some of the country’s worst
terrorist attacks, has no more than 400 well armed guerrilla
fighters.
 --AFP
and ABS-CBN Interactive
|
