Battle with ISIS-linked militants tests Philippines’ Duterte

MANILA — Philippine troops engaged Islamic State-linked militants in pitched clashes Thursday around the southern city of Marawi as the military deployed tanks to secure vital installations in a battle that has become a major test for President Rodrigo Duterte’s government.

With thousands fleeing the city and militants holding a Roman Catholic priest and others hostage, television footage showed black smoke billowing near Marawi’s City Hall as civilians who had held out in the besieged city watched from rooftops.

Explosions and bursts of gunfire could be heard at a distance, as the military asserted it was making progress clearing out “desperate” militants, forcing them to split into groups as they darted around the city trying to flee.

The fighting led Duterte to impose martial law over the southern Philippines this week. The military’s claims of success in battling the insurgents appeared to clash with images and reports from the city and surrounding areas that suggested a chaotic situation.

“What they are doing now are desperate moves,” Lt. Col. Joar Herrera, a military spokesman, said of the insurgents. “That is why they are engaging in terroristic activities to distract the focus of our military,” he added from an army camp outside the city.

He said troops had started to move around the besieged city of 200,000, extracting residents who were trapped inside their homes when members of the extremist Abu Sayyaf group, backed by the radical Maute gang, attacked Tuesday.

The military began fighting after receiving reports that Isnilon Hapilon, the leader of an Abu Sayyaf faction who has declared his allegiance to the Islamic State, was spotted in the area. But the government troops were surprised when they encountered a 100-strong Maute force armed with high-powered weapons.

Herrera said Hapilon was believed to still be trapped in the area, describing the enemy’s movement as “very fluid.”

He said about 40 rebels were still believed scattered around the city.

There was no word yet on the fate of the priest and his fellow hostages. While the Philippines is Asia’s center of Catholicism, the city of Marawi is overwhelmingly Muslim.

Firefights were described as sporadic Thursday, and the death toll stood at 31 militants, 11 soldiers and two police officers. Thirty soldiers were wounded, the military said.

The intensity of the fighting caught the government by surprise, leading Duterte to cut short a trip to Russia in addition to declaring martial law in the south.

On Wednesday, he raised the prospect that Islamic State-linked rebels could gain a foothold in the northern Philippines and warned that he might impose military rule over the rest of the country. That alarmed rights groups, which said it would be a throwback to the dictatorial rule of Ferdinand Marcos, whose name Duterte invoked.

Rights groups have warned that the martial law declaration could lead to more abuses, including more killings in the president’s deadly war on drugs, which has so far left thousands dead since last year.