Duterte rests as ‘city burns’

Australian journalist shot

MANILA, June 15, (Agencies): Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has withdrawn from public duties this week because he is tired and needs to “rejuvenate”, his spokesman said Thursday as government forces battled Islamist militants in the biggest crisis of his rule.

Duterte, 72, has not been seen in public since Sunday and missed a scheduled appearance the following day at annual Independence Day celebrations in Manila, sparking speculation about the state of his health.

“He’s just taking some time off to rejuvenate,” presidential spokesman Ernesto Abella told reporters.

Abella said there was no date for when Duterte would resume his official duties, although he insisted the president was healthy.

“I’m saying that there’s nothing to worry about in terms of sickness,” he said. “The president is well.” Pressed by journalists to state whether Duterte had visited a doctor this week, Abella said: “I’m not privy to those matters but I’m sure he’s checked with his own experts.”

Duterte was last seen in the southern city of Cagayan de Oro, visiting soldiers wounded in nearby fighting with Islamic State group-styled gunmen that is now on its fourth week.

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Clashes

Fifty-eight soldiers and police officers have died in the clashes in Marawi city, while at least 26 civilians have also been confirmed killed.

The militants remain holed up in pockets of Marawi alongside hundreds of trapped civilians being used as hostages or human shields.

Duterte imposed martial law over Marawi and the rest of the southern region of Mindanao, home to 20 million people, on the day the fighting erupted to head off what he said was an attempt by IS to carve out its own territory there.

Abella said Duterte was taking time off because of a punishing schedule since then, which included regular visits to military camps and hospitals to support troops.

“It has been really brutal, so it is important to allow him this kind of

for minor injuries, of whom eight have already been released, it said. (AFP)

Americans flock to Cuba:

Some

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rest,” Abella said.

Duterte had repeatedly denied during last year’s presidential election campaign that he suffered from cancer.

However he said last December that he used to take fentanyl, a highly addictive synthetic opioid, to ease the pain of a spinal injury that he suffered in motorcycle accidents many year earlier.

Shot

Meanwhile, an Australian television journalist was shot in the neck on Thursday as he reported from a southern Philippine city where Islamist militants are battling government troops, but he did not suffer major injuries.

Adam Harvey, a reporter for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, wrote on Twitter: “Lucky”, alongside an image of an X-ray showing the bullet lodged in his neck, close to his spine.

“Thanks everyone — I’m okay. Bullet is still in my neck, but it missed everything important,” he said in another Twitter post.

Harvey was shot in Marawi, the most important Muslim city in the mainly Catholic Philippines where government forces are struggling to defeat hundreds of militants fighting under the black flags of the Islamic State (IS) group.

He was inside the provincial capitol compound where local and foreign journalists have congregated during the more than three weeks of fighting, the government’s crisis management committee spokesman, Zia Alonto Adiong, told AFP.

Although the compound is secured by the military, it is only about two kms (1.2 miles) from the pockets of the city that the gunmen control.

“I want to appeal to everyone you should be very careful because in our assessment the vicinity of the 103rd (military camp), the vicinity of the capitol is within the line of sight of the enemy,” local military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Jo-ar Herrera told reporters in the compound after the shooting incident.

300,000 Americans flocked to Cuba in the first five months of 2017, nearly the same number as for all of last year, officials in Havana said on Wednesday.

Just two days before US President Donald Trump was due to announce a new policy rolling back a rapprochement initiated by his predecessor Barack Obama, the official Cubadebate website published figures showing a continuing boom in tourism from the United States.

Havana’s national statistics bureau said that by the end of May, some 284,565 Americans had traveled to Cuba this year.

By contrast, about 285,000 Americans visited the communist island in all of 2016 — a figure that was a 74 percent over 2015, with US residents the third biggest group after Canadians and Cuban expats. (AFP)