Tight security for Basilan

BASILAN – Police and military have tightened security in Basilan province, a known stronghold of the Abu Sayyaf group, following the capture of 2 suspected bombers in the capital city of Isabela.

Police and soldiers continue to patrol the cities of Isabela and Lamitan and municipalities where the Abu Sayyaf is actively operating.

Last week, security forces captured Mudzrim Ilaman and Kadir Ajanal after soldiers and policemen tracked them down in the village called Menzi and seized improvised from the duo.

It was not immediately known whether the duo was planning an attack in Basilan or a strike in Zamboanga City, but police were interrogating the militants.

Police said the 2 men were followers of a notorious Abu Sayyaf leader Furuji Indama, whose group pledged allegiance to the terrorist group Islamic State of Syria and Iraq or Daesh.

Basilan is a major stronghold of the Abu Sayyaf also called Al Harakatul Al-islamiya, explosives

which has been founded in the province in the early 1990s by Ustadz Abdurajak Abubakar Janjalani, who was killed by the police in 1998.

Since then, the Abu Sayyaf - which was originally fighting for a Muslim homeland - split into many small groups and expanded in Sulu and other nearby provinces and eventually resorted to terrorism and ransom kidnappings to finance its violent campaign in the troubled South. (Zamboanga Post)