By CARLOS H. CONDE
The New York Times
Published: December 10, 2009
MANILA — Gunmen took 75 people, including schoolchildren, hostage on Thursday in the southern Philippines, officials said.
The gunmen released the 17 children and an elderly woman later in the day, the officials said.
Between 15 and 20 assailants took the hostages from an elementary school near the town of Prosperidad in Agusan del Norte, a province in Mindanao in the south after police officials tried to serve an arrest warrant on one of their leaders, said Ma. Randolph Cabangbang, an army spokesman.
The leader, identified as Ondo Perez, allegedly heads a criminal gang called the Perez Group and is wanted for the murder of a resident of the town.
Senior Superintendent Nestor Fajura, operations chief of the Philippine police in the region, told ABS-CBN television that Mr. Perez and his group took the hostages to prevent his arrest.
Also among the hostages were a teacher and two employees of a logging company Major Cabangbang said. Police have not yet established the identity or the condition of the remaining 57 hostages, he said.
Major Cabangbang said negotiators have been dispatched to the village to try to convince the men to surrender. “The situation remains fluid at this point,” he said by telephone from Mindanao.
Superintendent Fajura, the police official, said on national television that the abductors are demanding the withdrawal of the murder charge against Mr. Perez and a halt to police and military operations against the group.
Superintendent Fajura said they also demanded the presence of journalists during the negotiations. “We will try to work out the release of the other hostages,” he said.
Major Cabangbang said the military has sent reinforcements and a crisis management team to the town, about 500 miles south of Manila.
Earlier, police officials in Manila told reporters that shots had been fired near the scene of the abductions.
The hostage drama follows the recent massacre in Maguindanao Province, also in Mindanao, of 57 people — most of them journalists and media workers — by militiamen allegedly under the command of Andal Ampatuan Jr., a scion of Maguindanao’s most influential family.
President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, under pressure to resolve the case because the Ampatuans are her political allies, placed Maguindanao under martial law.
As in the Maguindanao case, where the killers have been identified by witnesses as militiamen, Mr. Perez is a former member of a paramilitary group that the military armed and trained to help in counter-insurgency operations, police officials said.
Local militias have often been accused of criminality and human rights violations.
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