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The military has deployed several war vessels around
Basilan province in southern Mindanao to prevent supposed remnants
of the al-Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf from escaping to nearby islands.
It gave funeral honors on Friday
in Zamboanga City to the 23 soldiers killed in clashes in the
province on Wednesday and Thursday.
Col. Romeo Brawner, the chief of
the Armed Forces’ Public Affairs Office, said that the war vessels
were deployed on Thursday right after a day-long encounter between
government troops and Abu Sayyaf rebels that left more than 50 dead.
He did not say how many war vessels were deployed to the area.
Brawner added that a naval
blockade or what the Philippine Navy calls a naval barrier patrol
will be monitoring the waters surrounding Basilan to stop attempts
of the Abu Sayyaf to escape.
He said that the remnants of the
Abu Sayyaf might be planning to flee to Sulu province, or to the
Zamboanga provinces, the nearest neighbors of Basilan.
Lt. Col. Edgard Arevalo, the
chief of the Philippine Navy’s Public Affairs Office, said that
the Navy had deployed at least three gunboats and several patrol and
multipurpose attack boats.
Honors for the slain
Also on Friday, Marine Maj. Gen.
Benjamin Dolorfino, the commander of military forces in Mindanao,
led the holding of funeral honors for the slain soldiers in
Zamboanga City along with Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro and
Armed Forces chief Gen. Victor Ibrado.
Relatives and families of the
dead wept as fellow soldiers paid their last respects. The coffins
of the slain troops were paraded inside the Western Mindanao Command
headquarters where hundreds of their uniformed colleagues and
civilian employees lined up a road leading to the gymnasium, where
the caskets were put on display for public viewing.
“What did they do to our boy?
He’s such a young soldier. He doesn’t deserve this brutality,”
cried one woman.
And just across the woman, family
members also gathered and wept around a coffin of a soldier, whose
face was deformed because of what looked like a hack wound. Two
other caskets were closed to hide the wounds on the faces of the
dead Marines inside.
Fighting has so far subsided in
Basilian but Dolorfino said that military operations against the Abu
Sayyaf will continue.
Government troops stormed an Abu
Sayyaf camp in the hinterland village of Silangkum in Ungkaya Pukan
town in Basilan on Wednesday and seized weapons and improvised
explosives. Day-long clashes left at least 23 soldiers and around 40
militants dead.
Despite the military casualty
toll, the recent offensive against the Abu Sayyaf was considered a
success because troops were able to capture the main camp of the
rebels in Basilan. The camp, according to the military, was used for
training bombers and manufacturing explosives.
Clashes with MILF
The Moro Islamic Liberation Front
(MILF) apparently was caught in the crossfire between the military
and the Abu Sayyaf.
The MILF also on Friday accused
government troops of attacking its forces. It said that the troops
also mutilated the bodies of three rebels, including a senior MILF
leader who was killed in the clashes. The MILF is negotiating peace
with the government, Dolorfino denied the MILF accusations.
“That’s not true,” he said.
Lt. Col. Gamal Hayudini, the
commander of the military’s Fourth Civil Relations Group, said
that MILF gunmen engaged the troops, who were pursuing the Abu
Sayyaf, in a firefight despite earlier coordination between the
military and the rebel group.
Both Muslim separatist groups,
the Abu Sayyaf and the MILF have been fighting for almost 40 years
for an independent Islamic state in southern Philippines. The Abu
Sayyaf, though, is listed by the US State Department as a foreign
terrorist organization.
--Jefferson Antiporda And Al Jacinto
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