MANILA – Seven suspected members of the Abu Sayyaf extremist group, including two women, were killed during a raid conducted by an elite unit of the Philippine Marines on an island town of Sulu province in Mindanao at dawn on Sunday, a top military official reported.
Brigadier General Rustico Guerrero, the chief of the military’s Task Force Comet based in Sulu, also reported that a Marine soldier was wounded in the encounter which occurred in Siasi before 4 am Sunday.
But Guerrero added the Marines failed to capture one of their main targets, a Malaysian national identified as Zulpikli Bin Hir alias Marwan, one of the ranking leaders of the Indonesia-based Jemaah Islamiyah militant group with confirmed ties to the global terrorist network of Osama bin Laden.
Marwan, Guerrero said, is a US-trained engineer and explosives expert who carries a $5 million reward from the US government.
Marwan is also said to be coddled by the Abu Sayyaf militants and has been training them in bomb-making since he sought refuge in Mindanao in 2003.
Guerrero added the leader of the militants, identified as Abu Benhur, also managed to escape along with Marwan at the height of the firefight.
The killing of the seven suspected militants came about two week after another elite Marine team raided an Abu Sayyaf hideout in a remote “barangay†(village) in the town of Maimbung, Sulu on February 21.
The raid resulted in the killing of a ranking Abu Sayyaf leader, Alpader Parad, and five of his followers.
The military has linked Parad to several kidnap-for-ransom cases as well as the killing of foreign and Filipino hostages for which the Abu Sayyaf has gained notoriety and being dubbed by the US and the European Union as a “terrorist group.â€
When he was killed, Parad was wanted for the abduction of three Red Cross staff members – an Italian, a Swiss and a Filipino – near the Sulu provincial capitol in the capital town of Jolo on January 1, 2009.
The military and the police said the killing of Parad has dealt a major blow to the Abu Sayyaf but also admitted the militants could resort to more violence because of their improved bomb-making capabilities due to the training they have received from Marwan and other explosives experts identified with the Jamaah Islamiyah.
Meanwhile, Guerrero said they launched the military operation after receiving information from their intelligence sources that the militants, including Marwan, were holed up in the town of Siasi.
The operation, Guerrero said, was undertaken by an elite unit of the Marine battalion special landing team who sneaked into the island aboard rubber boats.
He said the Marines apparently caught by surprise the militants who engaged them in a 10-minute firefight before fleeing and leaving their seven dead behind.
At about 4 am, or an hour later, Guerrero said the Marines caught up with the fleeing militants and engaged them in another fierce firefight.
He added the Marines seized from the two encounter sites at least 15 high-powered firearms and assorted ammunition.
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