MANILA, Philippines (AP) – Philippine troops killed a rebel Abu Sayyaf commander guilty of years of rescue hijackings and on Sunday rescued the last of his four Indonesian prisoners, the military said.
Marines wounded Amajan Sahidjuan in a shootout on Saturday night and he later died of blood loss on Kalupag Island, in the southernmost province of Tawi Tawi. Two other militants managed to escape and dragged the last of the four Indonesian hostages, but the troops finally rescued him on Sunday, said regional military commander, Lieutenant General Corleto Vinluan Jr ..
On Thursday night, three Indonesian men were rescued by police who also captured one of their captors Abu Sayyaf along the coast of the city of South Ubian in Tawi Tawi.
The military said the Abu Sayyaf militants led by Sahidjuan were fleeing attacks in neighboring Sulu province, when their launch was hit by huge waves and brought down Tawi Tawi.
A military official said the militants were trying to cross the sea border to Tambisan Island, in the neighboring state of Sabah, Malaysia, to release the prisoners in exchange for a ransom of at least five million pesos ($ 104,000), but the Philippine military learned of the plan and launched secret attacks.
The officer, who has a great deal of knowledge of anti-Abu Sayyaf operations, spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity because of the lack of authority to speak publicly.
Vinluan said that the rescue of Indonesian men, the last known hostages held by Abu Sayyaf, would allow government forces to wipe out the rebels in search of ransom.
“It will be relentless in a massive and focused military operation because, now, we would not worry about the kidnapping victims being hit,” Vinluan told reporters by telephone.
Vinluan said there were about 80 armed men left from Abu Sayyaf in Sulu and the peripheral island provinces. One of his remaining elderly leaders, Radulan Sahiron, fell ill and was injured in a recent offensive in Sulu, he said.
Sahidjuan, who uses the war name Apuh Mike, has been accused of carrying out rescue hijackings since the early 1990s. He was among the Abu Sayyaf militants who attacked the southern Christian city of Ipil in 1995, where they killed more 50 people after robbing banks and shops and burning the city center in one of its most audacious attacks.
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, rescue hijackings and beheadings. Some of its factions have aligned themselves with the Islamic State group.
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 Malaysian coastal cities and cargo ship crews. .