‘Foreign fighters part of IS invasion’
MARAWI CITY/DAVAO, Philippines: I ndonesians and Malaysians were among foreign Jihadists battling the military after laying siege to a southern Philippine city, the government said yesterday, in a rare admission of what it said was an Islamic State ‘invasion’.
The army has deployed attack helicopters and special forces to drive rebels of the Islamic State-linked Maute group out of Marawi City and Malaysians and Indonesians and other foreigners were among six guerrillas killed on Thursday.
The announcement elevates the threat of what experts and the military say are moves by Islamic State to exploit the poverty and lawlessness of predominantly Muslim Mindanao island to establish a base for extremists from Southeast Asia and beyond.
“What’s happening in Mindanao is no longer a rebellion of Filipino citizens,” Solicitor General Jose Calida told a news conference.
“It has transmogrified into invasion by foreign terrorists, who heeded the call of the ISIS to go to the Philippines if they find difficulty in going to Iraq and Syria,” he said, using the acronym for Islamic State.
What’s happening in Mindanao is no longer a rebellion of Filipino citizens. It has transmogrified into invasion by foreign terrorists, who heeded the call of the ISIS to go to the Philippines if they find difficulty in going to Iraq and Syria Jose Calida, Solicitor General
President Rodrigo Duterte has delivered on his threat to impose martial law on Mindanao, the country’s second-largest island, to stop the spread of radical Islam. He has been pleading with Mindanao governors and religious leaders to work with the government to keep extremists at bay.
Duterte recently warned that Islamic State fighters driven from Iraq and Syria would end up in the southern Philippines and his country was at risk of “contamination”.
The Maute, which has pledged allegiance to Islamic State, held its positions on bridges and buildings on Friday as ground troops launched early morning offensives to flush out the remaining gunmen after unrest that has killed 11 soldiers and 31 militants.
The White House on Thursday said it backed the Philippines in its fight against “cowardly terrorists”.
Few of Marawi’s 200,000 inhabitants remained after militants ran amok, seizing and torching schools, a college and a hospital. They freed more than 100 prisoners and took a priest and churchgoers hostage at the city’s cathedral.
Convoys of vehicles packed with evacuees and protected by heavily armed soldiers streamed into nearby Iligan City.
One Christian resident, Mark Angelou Siega, described how students fled amid fears rebels would take over their university campus.
“We were preparing for exams and we could hear the gunfire and bombs,” he told Reuters. — Reuters