News Story: Philippine general claims leader of Marawi siege dead

MANILA. Sept. 4 (Xinhua) -- A Philippine military general said on Monday that one of the leaders of the Islamist extremist Maute group that attacked the southern Philippine city of Marawi has been killed in the fire fighting to retake the city.

Citing information culled from social media. Lt. Gen. Carlito Galvez, the commanding general of the military's Western Mindanao Command (Westmincom), said the military believes that Abdullah Maute is already killed.

"Abdullah Maute is already killed. Chatter over Telegram indicates he is killed," Galvez told a news conference in Marawi City. He said the information is based on entries in the Arabic language on Telegram.

Galvez also said that Maute's brother, Omarkhayam, is still alive.

Read the full story at Xinhua

News Story: Maute group possibly hiding in Lanao, Maguindanao border

By John Unson

LANAO DEL SUR, Philippines — Islamic militants have been hiding in Mount Cararao, not in Buldon town in Maguindanao, long before the May 23 outbreak of the conflict in Marawi City, officials said early Saturday.

Mount Cararao, a vast swath of highland fields with scattered rainforests, separates the provinces of Maguindanao and Lanao del Sur, both in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.

Commanders of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front who belong to the Iranun tribe said on Saturday morning that the militants are nowhere near Buldon, which is located in the first district of Maguindanao.

Senior Superintendent Agustin Tello, director of the Maguindanao provincial police, said on Saturday that the municipal police office in Buldon has not reported of any presence of Maute terrorists in the municipality.

“Possibly they are in Mount Cararao which is at the border of Butig, Lanao del Sur and Buldon, Maguindanao,” Tello said.

President Rodrigo Duterte had said in a speech at the Eastern Mindanao Command Headquarters in Davao City Friday that he is apprehensive of a spillover of the hostilities in Marawi City to Buldon owing to the presence there of unidentified armed men.

He said he had thought of lifting martial law in Mindanao, which is to last until December 31, but changed his mind due to the security issues besetting Buldon.

Members of the Buldon municipal police office told reporters on Saturday that it is in Mount Cararao where suspected members of the Maute terror group were spotted.

An Iranun farmer, Limon Mandiga Botari, said he is doubtful the terrorists would try to get close to Buldon.

Read the full story at PhilStar

News Story: Soldier on end to Marawi war - Are we there yet?

Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP)

By Edith Regalado

DAVAO CITY, Philippines – “Are we there yet?”

One of the soldiers in the battlefront in Marawi City asked President Duterte during his surprise visit to the frontlines last Thursday whether the end to the fighting was near.

“I am not ready to talk peace at this time because so many soldiers have died in the war, including policemen. We have to end it the way it should be,” Duterte replied.

Duterte said the ultimate objective remains and the war against the Maute group will not stop until the last terrorist is neutralized. 

Duterte assured the soldiers that he would look for the money to rehabilitate Marawi from the ravages of war.

“But at the same time, I have also to rehabilitate my armed forces because there’s a fracture here somewhere. So many have died and I need the money to kickstart the rehabilitation,” he said.

Read the full story at PhilStar

News Story: Abu Sayyaf kill 9 villagers in Basilan rampage

By Roel Pareño

ZAMBOANGA CITY, Philippines – Abu Sayyaf terrorists swooped down on a Basilan community as it was preparing for a fiesta yesterday, opened fire and torched houses and the health center, killing at least nine villagers.

The bandits were disguised as soldiers when they attacked the village in Barangay Tubigan, Maluso town.

A militiaman who confronted the raiders was quickly overpowered and his body reportedly mutilated after he was killed.

The motive for the rampage has yet to be established.

In encounters since Sunday in Akbar town also in Basilan, government forces have killed five Abu Sayyaf terrorists.

Yesterday’s attack was the latest challenge to President Duterte, who had vowed to eat the terrorists’ liver, with salt and vinegar.

Col. Juvymax Uy, commander of Joint Task Force Basilan (JTFB), said residents were busy preparing for their fiesta when the terrorists attacked yesterday morning.

The police said the terrorists indiscriminately fired at civilian houses and vehicles passing by the area. Among those killed were a minor and three females.

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News Story: UN - Use of child soldiers persistent problem in Philippines

Child Soldier in Asia (File Photo)

By Jose Katigbak, STAR Washington bureau

WASHINGTON – The use of child soldiers by armed groups is a persistent problem in the Philippines, officials here said following revelations by Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana that these groups used child warriors to behead hostages.

The UN reports armed groups operating in the Philippines, including the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, New People’s Army, Moro National Liberation Front, the Abu Sayyaf and the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters, continue to recruit and use children, at times through force, for combat and noncombat roles.

The US State Department in its recent Trafficking in Persons Report 2017 said protracted armed conflict and reports of recruitment and use of child soldiers by armed groups in Mindanao were continuing.

It described child soldiering as a grave human rights violation.

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News Story: Philippines - 25 killed in clashes between MILF, IS gunmen

Hanoi (VNA) – At least 25 people were killed in clashes between the government-backed Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and gunmen of the self-claimed Islamic State (IS) in southern Philippines, said the Philippine Army on August 14.

The clashes took place amid efforts of the Philippine armed forces to re-establish order in the southern island of Mindanao.

The Philippine Government and the MILF had signed a peace agreement to contain insurgents in Mindanao who pledged allegiance to the IS.

The MILF said extremists are crushing efforts to seek stronger Muslim autonomy in Mindanao, which aims to end nearly 50 years of conflict claiming over 120,000 lives and making two million people abandon their houses.

Read the full story at VietnamPlus

Think Tank: Mindanao - a new hub for Islamic State?

Peter Chalk

In May 2017, a band of militants connected to the Maute group (MG) attacked and laid siege to the city of Marawi in the southern Philippines after security forces attempted to arrest Isnilon Hapilon, the leader of one of two factions of the Abu Sayyaf group (ASG). The assault and subsequent occupation, which took several weeks to end, has once again raised national, regional and international concern that Mindanao and its surrounding islands are rapidly emerging as a beachhead of religious violence.

A particular fear is that the so-called Islamic State (IS) will seek to ‘hijack’ this wider region in order to establish a new province or wilayah from which to launch attacks across the country and throughout Southeast Asia. However, it’s too early to conclude that the southern Philippines is devolving into a centre for transnational jihadist fanaticism or, indeed, that IS is even looking to operate from that part of the country.

Islamist extremism in the southern Philippines revolves around three principal clusters. The first is the ASG, which is primarily based in Basilan and Sulu and which for the past few years has been actively trying to find a new religious identity to define its struggle in Mindanao. In 2014, a dozen ASG cadres uploaded a video on YouTube in which they read out an Arabic statement that pledged ‘loyalty and obedience’ to IS—a bayat that Hapilon reiterated in 2016.

News Story: Palace optimistic on passage of Bangsamoro Basic Law

By Alexis Romero

MANILA, Philippines — Malacañang is optimistic that Congress will pass the new Bangsamoro Basic Law despite claims that it still contains the contentious provisions that were in the previous draft.

The BBL, the measure that would implement the 2014 peace deal between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, was bypassed by the previous Congress in the wake of claims that some of its provisions were unconstitutional.

The passage of the bill, one of the priorities of the Aquino administration, was also hampered by the backlash over the Mamasapano clash, which left 44 police commandos dead in 2015. The BBL would have created a new Bangsamoro political entity in Mindanao with greater economic and political powers.

Presidential Spokesman Ernesto Abella believes lawmakers will agree with the provisions of the new draft BBL, which was submitted to President Rodrigo Duterte this month.

“I believe circumstances have changed in the Senate. And the Congress understands the situation at hand on the ground. And I believe that they will concur, that they will understand the situation,” he said in a press briefing yesterday in Malacañang.

Read the full story at PhilStar

News Story: MILF refuses to broker for Maute militants

By Jim Gomez

MANILA, Philippines — The leader of the Philippines' largest Muslim rebel group says Islamic State-linked militants wanted his group to broker their possible withdrawal from Marawi City during the major military offensive against them but he refused to intervene.

Al Haj Murad Ebrahim of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front told The Associated Press in an interview late Tuesday that intervening would have been difficult because President Rodrigo Duterte has declared his government would not negotiate with terrorists.

The nearly two months of insurrection in Marawi is the worst he has seen in his more than four decades as a rebel in the country's south, Murad said, adding the attackers are now wracked by infighting and have expressed through religious emissaries they are ready to fight to the death.

The violence underscores the urgency for the government and the Moro rebel group to implement a 2014 Muslim autonomy deal to help stop the rising tide of extremism, he said.

More than 550 people, including 413 militants, have been killed in Marawi since May 23, when hundreds of gunmen, waving Islamic State group-style black flags, stormed into the city center, occupied commercial buildings and villages and took hostages. Duterte ordered troops to crush the attackers and declared martial law in the south for 60 days, which he now wants to extend up to the end of the year to deal with the worst crisis he has faced in his yearlong presidency.

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News Story: 'Vacillating' CPP-NPA-NDF puzzles Duterte

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News Story: Southeast Asia anti-terror efforts must start in Marawi

By Patricia Lourdes Viray

MANILA, Philippines — The Southeast Asia region must deepen counter-terror efforts as ISIS-inspired local terror groups lay siege in Mindanao, particularly in Marawi City, an analyst said.

Elliot Brennan, a research fellow at the Institute for Security and Development Policy's Asia Program in Sweden, said the siege in Marawi City must serve as a lesson for the whole region.

On May 23, President Rodrigo Duterte declared martial law and suspended the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus in Mindanao following a clash between government forces and the Maute group.

Brennan noted that the failure of the Armed Forces of the Philippines to act on the Maute group's attack on Marawi despite intelligence report was negligent.

"Its failings since - such as to apprehend the Malay financier of the Marawi campaign, to stop the escape of Hapilon, or simply to quell the insurgency - show a worrying lack of capacity," Brennan said in an article published by Sydney-based Lowy Institute for International Policy.

The policy analyst noted that the fight in Marawi is not actually about the city since many of the militants and funding are from abroad, taking the conflict to a global narrative.

The key to addressing this issue on the regional level would be a disaggregation, delinking and dismantling of militants from around the world.

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News Report: Philippine Troops Gain Against Muslim Rebels but Face Aftershocks

Ralph Jennings

TAIPEI, TAIWAN — Philippine officials say they are winning a month long fight against violent Muslim rebels in a southern city and expect a return to normalcy. But experts caution of new violence if the underlying discontent outlasts the battle.

Government forces “continue to gain (a) foothold” in parts of the southern city of Marawi that were previously controlled by the Maute Group, a terrorist group that has pledged allegiance to Islamic State and laid siege to the city May 23, the Armed Forces of the Philippines said Wednesday via the presidential website.

Fighting to date has killed 369 people, including 276 suspected terrorists, the Manila Times reported Thursday.

News Story: Filipino Muslims trust MILF, MNLF (Poll)

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News Story: Manhunt continues against gunmen who storm S. Philippine villages, classes suspended

Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP)

DAVAO CITY, the Philippines, June 21 (Xinhua) -- Local officials have ordered the halting of classes in at least two towns in the southern Philippines as government troops continued hunting down Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF) following an attack early on Wednesday.

Philippine authorities said dozens of armed BIFF members, a breakaway group from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), attacked Pigcawayan town in Mindanao's North Cotabato province around 5 a.m. local time on Wednesday.

The armed men also broke into a school in the adjacent village of Simsiman, and fighting erupted as soldiers and police responded to drive out the gunmen numbering over one hundred, officials have said.

Classes in schools in Pigcawayan and neighboring town of Midsayap have been suspended. Romeo Arana, mayor of Midsayap, some 30 kilometers away from Pigcawayan, said class suspension was prompted by sightings of BIFF gunmen in some parts of his town.

Armed Forces of the Philippines spokesperson Brig. Gen. Restituto Padilla Jr. told a press briefing in Presidential Palace that government troops are conducting pursuit operations against the rebels.

"It's already resolved," Padilla said. "They've withdrawn, they are no longer there. The school area is again safe. The troops are in pursuit mode."

Read the full story at Xinhua

Related Story: Extremists use civilians as human shield in fresh clash with troops - Philippine military

News Report: Time Bomb Ticking - Threat of Daesh Hangs Over Southeast Asia

Five ASEAN countries are joining forces to counter the threat posed to the region by the internationally-condemned terrorist organization Daesh.

Around 62% of the world's Muslims live in the Asia-Pacific region, which stretches from Turkey to Indonesia; they number 1 billion people.

The world's largest Muslim population resides not in the Middle East, but in Indonesia, making it a highly desirable goal for Daesh. Their plan is to make the world’s fourth most populous country (after China, India and the USA) a fanatical Islamic caliphate.

The Southeast Asia region in particular is home to about three hundred million Muslims. 

The Indonesian defense minister, Ryamizard Ryacudu, is set to meet with his counterparts from Malaysia, the Philippines, Brunei and Singapore to discuss the rising threat.

Natalia Rogozhina, a PhD in Political Science who is the leading research associate at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations of the Russian Academy of Sciences, spoke to Sputnik Vietnam in an interview about this development.

News Story: ‘No failure of intelligence in Marawi’

MANILA, Philippines - The crisis in Marawi City was not caused by a failure of intelligence but by connivance between local warlords and terrorists who stockpiled firearms in the city and the “soft” policy towards rebels, President Duterte said yesterday.

Duterte said the government was aware that firearms were being stockpiled in Mindanao but took it for granted because of the peace talks with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF). 

“We have adopted a very soft policy towards the rebels and this came about because they were bringing firearms. Since we are thinking of getting peace with the MNLF and MILF. The game there involves firearms. We took it for granted. We just allowed it to happen because we never knew until that time who was really the enemy,” Duterte told the troops in Butuan City. 

“When they see firearms and they were told that it’s for MILF or MNLF, the standing order was maybe we can talk to our brothers so there will be no trouble (but) it turned out that the Maute were bringing the firearms surreptitiously and we did not know how much ammunition and firearms were stockpiled, and besides it was not a failure of intelligence,” he added. 

Appearing in public for the first time in nearly a week, Duterte said the terrorists seem to have an “endless supply” of firearms and ammunition because of the assistance of corrupt local warlords.

“But all the while, the Maute (was conniving with) politicians there, the warlords, and were stockpiling. That’s why they do not run out of M203 bullets,” he said, noting many soldiers were hit by that type of bullet. 

Duterte confirmed extremists from Indonesia, Syria, Malaysia, Sri Lanka and Kuwait joined the Maute terrorists in the clashes with government troops. 

Read the full story at PhilStar

News Story: AFP - Hapilon holed up in Marawi village

Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP)

MANILA, Philippines -  Abu Sayyaf leader Isnilon Hapilon is believed to be hiding with foreign terrorists in the area in Marawi City where 13 Marines were killed in a clash with the Maute militants over the weekend, according to Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) spokesman Brig. Gen. Restituto Padilla Jr.

He was referring to Barangay Lilod Madaya, where the Philippine Marines clashed with the Maute group last Friday from around 3:30 a.m. to around 6:30 p.m.

Padilla told radio station dzBB that foreign fighters have been in Mindanao even before the Marawi hostilities started on May 23, and suspected Hapilon’s presence in the area, which could be the reason it was highly fortified by the Maute group.

Hapilon is reportedly the emir of Islamic State (IS) terrorists in the Philippines.

The Maute group are also believed to be holding civilian hostages in the same village, the report further said.

“Sila ay napunta sa sektor na mukhang napasukan ng napakatinding depensa dahil po sa kinaroroonan na maaari ng mga hostages (They had gone to a sector that seemed to have a very strong defense because the hostages might be there),” Padilla said, referring to the Marines whose main objective was to secure the civilian hostages in the barangay.

The military official also assured they would try their best to conduct less air strikes and more ground assaults on areas still held by the terrorists in the coming days, the report said.

“Gagawin pa rin po natin iyan kung kinakailangan, pero iniiwasan po namin dahil malapitan na po ang labanan (We will resort to air strike if needed, but we are already avoiding it because the fighting is getting proximate),” he added.

As for the government’s plan to raise the Philippine flag at the Lanao del Sur provincial capitol in Marawi City today, Independence Day, Padilla said it would push through despite the loss of Marines.

Read the full story at PhilStar

News Story: MILF volunteer, rescue workers cited

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News Story: Rody to Maute matriarch - No ceasefire, peace talks

Philippines President Duterte

By Edith Regalado and Alexis Romero

DAVAO CITY , Philippines  – President Duterte yesterday thumbed down anew the overture of the matriarch of the notorious Maute clan for a possible ceasefire and peace talks with the government amid the continued siege in Marawi City that has already claimed almost 200 lives. 

“Iyong casualties natin, medyo mabigat, kaya sabi nila na mag-usap iyong nanay ni Maute, sabi ko (We suffered heavy casualties so they said I should talk to the mother of the Mautes, I said), ‘No, I will not.’ I will not talk anymore kasi marami na ang sundalo ko namatay. Marami nang pulis ko namatay. P***** i**, huwag mo akong bolahin diyan usap-usap na ’yan (because many of my soldiers have died. Many of my policemen have died. Son of a b****, do not fool me with those talks). Not anymore,” the President said in a pep talk with soldiers of the 1st Mechanized Infantry Brigade in Tacurong City, Sultan Kudarat yesterday afternoon. 

Duterte was referring to Ominta “Farhana” Romato, the first wife of Cayamora Maute, the patriarch of the clan who was arrested Tuesday morning in an Army-led Task Force Davao checkpoint in Barangay Sirawan here. Romato herself remains at large.

Maute and Romato are said to be the brains behind the organization, networking and operation of the Maute group.

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News Story: Duterte on Misuari offer of fighters for Marawi - Not now

By Alexis Romero

MANILA, Philippines — The 2,000 combatants offered by Moro National Liberation Front founder Nur Misuari will not join the campaign against Maute terrorists in Marawi City, President Rodrigo Duterte said Wednesday.

Speaking to Army troopers in Tacurong City, Duterte said it would not be good to pit Moros against fellow Moros.

"Nur and I talked once… He offered to send 2,000 of his men. I said ‘Wait, not now. Not now Nur,’” Duterte said.

“It’s not good to be fighting if they do not realize what it’s all about. A Moro against the Moro. Let us make them understand first what this is all about,” he added.

Security forces have been fighting the Maute militants in Marawi City since May 23. The terrorists, who are said to have ties with the extremist Islamic State, had launched attacks in the city, prompting Duterte to declare martial law in Mindanao.

Duterte previously said he was ready to recruit MNLF members and other former rebels to the military if the clashes in Marawi City drag on.

Read the full story at PhilStar