By Hader Glang
ZAMBOANGA CITY, Philippines
Heavy clashes have broken out between Philippine government troops and al-Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf militants, leaving at least three dead and two others wounded in the country’s Muslim south, according to the military.
Army spokesperson Capt. Rowena Muyuela told The Anadolu Agency that troops were conducting law enforcement operations in Basilan province – a known Abu Sayyaf stronghold – when they encountered an undetermined number of bandits in Tipo-Tipo town at around 6:55 a.m. (10:55 p.m. GMT) Thursday.
"The firefight is still ongoing with initial report [from the field] of three killed on the enemy side while the government side suffered two wounded in action," she said at the time of reporting.
Muyuela said the Abu Sayyaf members involved were under the command of notorious leader Furudji Indama, who was been identified as among those responsible in a July 2007 ambush on a military convoy that left 14 marines dead. Among those killed in the attack in Tipo-Tipo, 10 were beheaded.
Late last month Lt. Gen. Rustico Guerrero, army commander in the Philippines’ southernmost major island of Mindanao, deployed up to 2,500 additional troops to Basilan after the autonomous region’s governor, Mujiv Hataman, called for "all-out law enforcement operations" against the Abu Sayyaf.
The deployment followed the killing of six soldiers in an ambush by the group in Sumisip town.
Since 1991, the Abu Sayyaf has carried out bombings, kidnappings, assassinations and extortion in a struggle for an independent Islamic state in the southern Philippines.
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