MANILA, Philippines (AP) – Philippine police rescued three Indonesian hostages and captured one of their captors Abu Sayyaf when the militants’ launch was hit by huge waves and capsized while fleeing government operations, the military said on Friday.
Authorities were looking for a fourth Indonesian kidnapping victim who was on board the launch when it capsized on Pasigan Island on Thursday night in the southernmost province of Tawi Tawi, said regional military commander, Lieutenant General Corleto Vinluan, Jr.
A report by the Philippine police said residents found the Indonesian men along the coast of the city of South Ubian in Tawi Tawi and called the police. It was not immediately clear whether Indonesians swam to shore.
The men were abducted by gunmen from Abu Sayyaf off the coast of Malaysia while working for a Malaysian fishing company in January last year. The eight prisoners were taken across the sea border to the southern Philippines province of Sulu, where three of the victims were later released and another was shot and killed while trying to escape when their captors clashed with troops.
“The terrorists are fleeing the intense military operations underway in Sulu, so they sailed to Tawi-Tawi bringing the captives with them,” a Tawi Tawi military commander, Brig. Gen. Arturo Rojas, said.
Abu Sayyaf demanded ransom by Indonesians, but the captives came from poor fishing families and the Indonesian government has a no-ransom policy, Vinluan told DZMM radio when asked if the money had changed hands.
One of those rescued was a 45-year-old Abu Sayyaf militant. Other militants on a separate speedboat remain missing, although a man apparently from that boat was rescued by a passing passenger ship and the military was checking to see if he also belonged to Abu Sayyaf, officials said.
Abu Sayyaf is a small but violent group that has been separately blacklisted from the Philippines and the United States as a terrorist organization for bombings, kidnappings for rescue and beheadings. Some factions of the group have aligned themselves with the Islamic State.
The militants have been considerably weakened by years of military offensives, surrenders and setbacks in battles, but they remain a threat to national security. They have set off a security alarm in the region in recent years after they started venturing away from their jungle camps in Sulu, a poverty-stricken Muslim province in the Roman Catholic nation, and kidnappings in coastal Malaysian cities and also targeted cargo crews. ships passed.