Army outraged by police shooting of troops

The Philippine army chief expressed outrage over the fatal police shooting of four soldiers, including two officers, and demanded justice with both sides providing contrasting accounts of the killings.

eduardo Ano, a retired military chief of staff who now oversees the national police as interior secretary, ordered the police involved in Monday’s violence in the southern town of Jolo in Sulu province be disarmed and restricted for investigation.

Police said the soldiers were killed in a “misencounter” with a group of police officers. The army has countered that its two officers and two enlisted men were on a mission against Abu Sayyaf militants, including suspected suicide bombers, when they were flagged down and later fatally shot by police without provocation even after the soldiers identified themselves.

An army statement said its commanding general, Lt-Gen Gilbert Gapay, “is enraged” and vowed “there will be no let up in our quest for truth and justice”.

The violence reflects the often-complicated conditions under which the campaign against the Abu Sayyaf and its allied foreign and local militants has been waged by the military, with backing from the police, for about three decades.

The on and off offensives have considerably weakened the Abu Sayyaf, which is blacklisted by the US and the Philippines as a terrorist group, but it remains a national security threat.

“This is a very unfortunate incident that should have not happened,” Ano said.

Aside from a police investigation, he said he would ask the National Bureau of Investigation, Manila’s counterpart to the FBI, to carry out an inquiry.