Battle to end siege

HELICOPTERS STRIKE DAESH-LINKED REBEL-HELD BRIDGE WITH MACHINE GUNS

Marawi City: The Philippines deployed attack helicopters and special forces to drive out Daeshlinked rebels holed up in a besieged southern city yesterday, as efforts to take back control met heavy resistance.

Ground troops hid behind walls and armoured vehicles and exchanged volleys of gunfire with Maute group fighters, firing into elevated positions occupied by militants who have held Marawi City on Mindanao island for two days. Helicopters circled the city, peppering Maute positions with machine gun fire.

The Philippines deployed attack helicopters and special forces to drive out Daesh-linked rebels holed up in a besieged southern city yesterday, as efforts to take back control met heavy resistance.

Ground troops hid behind walls and armoured vehicles and exchanged volleys of gunfire with Maute group fighters, firing into elevated positions occupied by terrorists who have held Marawi City on Mindanao island for two days.

Helicopters circled the city, peppering Maute positions with machine gunfire to try to force them from a bridge vital to retaking Marawi, a mainly Muslim city of 200,000 where fighters had torched and seized a school, a jail, a cathedral, and took more than a dozen hostages. “We’re confronting maybe 30 to 40 remaining from the local terrorist group,” said Jo-Ar Herrera, spokesman for the military’s First Infantry Regiment.

“The military is conducting precise, surgical operations to flush them out ... The situation is very fluid and movements are dynamic because we wanted to out-step and out-manoeuvre them.”

Battles from Tuesday

The battles with the Maute group, which has pledged allegiance to Daesh, started on Tuesday afternoon during a failed raid by security forces on one of the group’s hideouts, which spiralled into chaos.

The turmoil was the final straw for President Rodrigo Duterte, who delivered on his threat to impose martial law on Mindanao, the country’s second-largest island, to stop the spread of radicalism.

Daesh claimed responsibility late on Wednesday for Maute’s activities via its Amaq news agency.

At least 21 people — seven soldiers, 13 rebels and a civilian — have been killed and religious leaders say terrorists were using Christians taken hostage during the fighting as human shields.

The White House condemned the Maute group as “cowardly terrorists”.

AP Armoured personnel carriers make their way through a queue of vehicles with fleeing residents that stretches for kilometres as Muslim militants lay siege in Marawi city in southern Philippines for the third day yesterday.