By Carlos H. Conde
International Herald Tribune
Published: March 17, 2009
MANILA: Clashes between government troops and Abu Sayyaf militants continued to flare in the southern Philippines on Tuesday, with three soldiers killed and 19 wounded, military officials said.
The fighting in the island province of Sulu entered a second day Tuesday as the Philippine military tried to free three Red Cross workers who were kidnapped in January by the Abu Sayyaf rebels. The military augmented its forces with civilian and paramilitary volunteers to try to prevent the group from escaping from the island, officials said.
“They are desperate. They want to get out of the constriction area,” Brig. Gen. Gaudencio Pangilinan, chief spokesman for the military, said at a news briefing in Zamboanga City, in the south. “We have three killed in action as a result of the series of engagements starting yesterday until this morning.”
In addition to the three soldiers, the military had received reports that six militants had been killed, although it had not confirmed those accounts.
General Pangilinan said he was not yet certain about the condition of the three hostages — Andreas Notter from Switzerland, Eugenio Vagni from Italy, and Mary Jean Lacaba of the Philippines.
“There is no word on the hostages,” he said. “But there was no sighting of them, so they might be away from the scene of the fighting.”
The three were kidnapped in Sulu on Jan. 15 while working on a water project at the province’s prison.
The International Committee of the Red Cross issued a plea for their safety.
“We repeat our call that no action should be taken that could put the lives of Mary Jean, Eugenio and Andreas in danger,” Alain Aeschlimann, head of the Red Cross in Asia-Pacific, said in a statement posted on the organization’s Web site.
“The responsibility for their well-being lies with all those involved in this situation.”
On Monday the military reported that Albader Parad, a rebel leader who acknowledged in a video last month that his group had taken the aid workers, had been wounded. The government has posted a reward for his capture or death.
Officials said soldiers overran an Abu Sayyaf camp on Monday and recovered tents and other materials belonging to the militants and hostages.
Also on Monday, Abu Sayyaf rebels threw a grenade into a karaoke bar in Jolo, in Sulu, killing two people, possibly in retaliation for the military offensive, said Lt. Steffani Cacho, a military spokeswoman.
Abu Sayyaf, a group of Islamist separatists with reported links to Al Qaeda, is on a United States government list of foreign terrorist organizations. It has been blamed for a series of kidnappings in the south, as well as some of the country’s worst terrorist attacks.
Mark McDonald contributed reporting from Hong Kong.
