8 suspected IS sympathizers killed in Philippine
Philippine marines killed eight suspected sympathizers of
the Islamic State group in a clash in the southern Philippines on Thursday,
seizing bomb-making equipment, assault rifles and black flags, military
officials said.
The militants were killed in a brief clash at dawn in a
hinterland off Palimbang town in Sultan Kudarat province, Brig. Gen. Emmanuel
Salamat said. They were mostly Filipinos but one was possibly Indonesian.
Recovered documents show the slain militants belonged to
Ansar Al-Khilafa Philippines, a new militant group with about 50 fighters who
pledged their allegiance to Islamic State group leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi
last year.
Marines found two assault rifles, a pistol, bomb-making
equipment and materials, two-way radios, documents and five Islamic State
group-inspired flags, some of which were displayed at the militants'
encampment, according to a military report and Salamat.
"Our forces were moving to arrest them but these
lawless elements opened fire," Salamat said by phone. "We have
received information that they were conducting bomb-making training and that
they may take steps to expand their group, so they became a target of a law
enforcement operation."
It was not immediately clear if the leader of the militants,
Mohamad Jaafar Maguid, who uses the nom de guerre Abu Ghaib or Commander
Tokboy, was among those killed, Salamat said.
A government report links Maguid and his men to at least six
attacks, including the killing of an army soldier, two grenade-throwing
incidents and a roadside bombing in April 2010 in Sarangani's Malapatan town.
Muslim militants from at least three small armed groups in
the country's volatile south, including the Ansar Al-Khilafa and the violent
Abu Sayyaf, have pledged support to the Islamic State group leader but there is
no evidence they have an active collaboration with the brutal group based in
Syria and Iraq, Philippine security officials say.
The Philippine marine raid on Thursday was coordinated with
a larger Muslim rebel group, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, to prevent its
fighters from being accidentally drawn in any fighting. The 11,000-strong Moro
rebel group has signed a peace deal with the government and has a presence in
Sarangani province, about 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) south of Manila.
In January this year, police commandos launched a highly-secretive
assault to capture a top Malaysian terror suspect in Mamasapano town in
southern Maguindanao province but did not coordinate the raid. Some Moro
Islamic Liberation Front rebels got entangled in clashes that killed 44 of the
elite police commandos.
Their deaths drew public outrage and stalled the
government's peace deal with the Moro rebels.
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