Police smuggling guns to jihadists

PHILIPPINES: Members of the Philippine security forces have been smuggling weapons and ammunition to Islamist militants who have occupied part of the southern city of Marawi.

Troops fighting the Maute group, an affiliate of Islamic State, detained three police officers on Thursday as they tried to drive through Marawi with a concealed cache of arms, including four M-16 automatic assault rifles. The men came from the town of Butig, the home base of the Maute group.

According to Philippine officers it is the latest in a series of attempts to re-arm the fighters, who have been holding out for 17 days against 4600 government troops and police, supported by helicopter gunships and bombing raids by fighter jets.

Lieutenant-colonel Jo-ar Herrera, an army spokesman, said the jihadists were attempting to smuggle people, weapons and ammunition into the patch of territory they were clinging on to in the city centre, south of the Agus river.

The security forces have uncovered caches of weapons and ammunition apparently placed by the Mautes before the battle over the city began on May 23.

It was precipitated by an unsuccessful attempt to arrest Isnilon Hapilon, the man named by Isis as its leader in the Philippines. He escaped with most of his men but left behind documents and videos revealing plans for a takeover of the city on May 26.

Almost all of Marawi’s 212,000 residents have fled, with even the areas secured by the government inhabited by only dogs and cats and patrolled intermittently by nervous soldiers.

Some residents remain trapped in the battle zone and it is their presence, according to the government forces, that is preventing a full assault on the jihadists. Estimates of their number have varied widely, but according to Herrera there are no more than 40 Islamist fighters remaining, with perhaps 150 civilians trapped in areas close to them.

Officers in the city have denied a claim made last week by Delfin Lorenzana, the defence minister, that fighters from Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Chechnya, Indonesia, Malaysia and elsewhere had been killed in the fighting.

‘‘Based on what we hear there are foreigners in there,’’ one military source said. ‘‘But what you hear is not the same as what you see with your own eyes.’’

– The Times