Philippines troops fight to retake city from militants
PHILIPPINES: The Philippine military was battling to regain control of the southern city of Marawi yesterday, hours after Islamist militants beheaded a local police chief and took a Catholic priest and his congregation hostage.
Militants from Islamic Stateinspired Maute group stormed the city on Tuesday, prompting President Rodrigo Duterte to cut short an official visit to Russia and declare martial law for 60 days across the island region of Mindanao.
He added that he would consider expanding his martial law order throughout the country attacks continued.
Duterte used the beheading of a police chief in the municipality of Malabang as further justification. ‘‘He was stopped by a checkpoint manned by terrorists and I think they decapitated him right there and then,’’ he said.
The president is well known for his iron-fisted tactics, having waged a brutal crackdown on drugs that has killed thousands since last year.
His hardline approach has won the admiration of US President Donald Trump, who congratulated him on doing in an ‘‘unbelievable if job’’ in a phone call last month.
More recently the Philippine leader has turned his focus on the raging Islamist insurgency in the south, which has now emerged as an epicentre of regional jihad.
The crisis erupted on Tuesday after the army raided the hideout of Hapilon, who has a US government bounty of US$5 million on his head. Abu Sayyaf fighters called for reinforcements from Maute, a group composed of former Moro Islamic Liberation Front guerrillas, and up to 200 gunmen have since been on the rampage in the city of over 200,000.
- Telegraph Group
‘Warning shot at birds’
North Korea has called South Korea’s recent firing of warning shots at the border a ‘‘reckless military provocation’’ aimed at promoting anti-Pyongyang sentiments and maintaining a confrontation on the peninsula. South Korea fired warning shots on Tuesday after detecting an object flying across the border from North Korea. Seoul later said the object was probably a balloon carrying Pyongyang’s propaganda leaflets. The North’s General Staff yesterday accused Seoul of fabricating the incident, saying South Korean soldiers fired 450 rounds of shots at a flock of birds. It warned in the statement that North Korea will closely watch how South Korea’s ‘‘confrontation hysteria’’ would develop.
Complaints target Hanson
The Australian Federal Police chief Andrew Colvin is evaluating claims that Pauline Hanson’s One Nation party may have breached state or federal electoral laws. Labor senator Murray Watt has asked the AFP to investigate reports Hanson’s party may have breached legal requirements for disclosure of electoral spending and for claiming election funding. Watt has also sought a probe into the party’s alleged collection of GST without the proper Australian Taxation Office registration required to do so, and the party’s use of an aircraft. Colvin told a Senate committee yesterday the AFP was evaluating the claims.
Trump trio targeted
Senior Russian intelligence and political officials discussed how to influence Donald Trump through his advisers, according to information gathered by American spies last summer, the New York Times reported yesterday. Citing three current and former US officials familiar with the intelligence, the newspaper said the conversations focused on Paul Manafort, then the Trump presidential campaign chairman, and Michael Flynn, a retired general who was then advising Trump. US congressional committees and a special counsel named by the Justice Department this month are investigating whether there was Russian interference in the 2016 US election and the possibility of collusion between Trump’s campaign and Russia.