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By Anthony Vargas Reporter
AFTER weeks of no fighting,
government soldiers are slowly moving in on the Abu Sayyaf
bandits’ positions in the strife-torn island province of Basilan,
officials said Thursday.
Marine Brig. Gen. Juancho Sabban,
commander of Joint Task Force Thunder, said intelligence agents are
confirming the locations of the bandits.
“We are cooking-up something.
Our intelligence [people] was pinpointing their exact locations,”
Sabban told defense reporters in a telephone-patched conference in
Camp Aguinaldo.
He said all their intelligence
operations are being done to validate and confirm the location of
the Abu Sayyaf to prepare the troops for “surgical strikes.”
The last engagement between
government soldiers and Abu Sayyaf bandits took place late last
month when troops shelled the bandit group’s positions in Tipo-Tipo
and Ungkaya Pukan towns.
The military has shifted tactics
in Basilan recently from combat-heavy driven operations to an
intelligence-driven one to avoid heavy casualties, especially among
civilians “because we don’t want the fighting to spread to other
places like Isabela City and Lamitan town,” Sabban said pointed
out.
Heavy fighting between Marines
and Abu Sayyaf members in Ungkaya Pukan on August 18 resulted in the
death of 16 soldiers and at least 40 bandits.
Since early July, the battles in
Basilan, the birthplace of the al-Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf, have been
limited to several villages in Tipo-Tipo, Ungkaya Pukan and Al-Barkah
towns.
Fighting in Basilan started when
a Marine contingent was ambushed by a group of Moro rebels and Abu
Sayyaf bandits in a remote village in Al-Barkah town on July 10
where 14 Marines were killed. Of these, 10 were beheaded and nine
others were wounded. The beheading elicited massive public outrage.
On August 18 at least 15 Marines
and as many as 40 Abu Sayyaf bandits were killed after government
troops overran an Abu Sayyaf camp in Barangay Selangum, Ungkaya
Pukan.
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