FIVE more Malaysian seamen on board a tugboat were abducted by suspected Abu Sayaff gunmen in waters between Tawi-Tawi and Sabah on Monday afternoon, Peace Process Secretary Jesus Dureza reported Tuesday.
“They [Abu Sayyaf] took again five more Malaysians in Lahad Datu,” Dureza said at a press briefing in Malacañang.
Dureza said the five Malaysians were on board the tugboat T/B Serudong 3 and barge Serudong 4 which were traveling from Sandakan to Semporna when they were intercepted by the militants around 4 p.m. of Monday.
“When Malaysian authorities recovered the said boats running unmanned in the vicinity of Lahad Datu, Sabah bordering Tawi-Tawi, the crew were already missing and believed to have been abducted,” said Dureza.
He identified the victims as Abdurahim Bin Summas, Tayudin Anjut, Mohammad Ridzuan Bin Ismael, Mohammad Jumadil Bin Rahim and Fandy Bin Bakran.
Dureza said the Duterte administration maintains that the Abu Sayyaf will have to answer for the crimes they have committed, but stressed that a “comprehensive approach” is needed to ensure that criminality stops in southwestern Mindanao.
“While we address the armed force accordingly by military might and force, you have also to address the community, the enabling environment that provided this kind of an upsurge of criminality which is so, so even barbaric,” Dureza said.
“Deal with the community, deal with force with those who commit criminal acts and address it on a calibrated level. You cannot just bomb everybody there because it’s a whole community that’s involved,” he added.
Meanwhile, Dureza revealed that Moro National Liberation Front founding chairman Nur Misuari has offered to help the government in addressing the criminality of Abu Sayyaf militants.
“There is an effort now by the group of Chairman Nur Misuari. I talked with him today. He called me over the phone and he said that he’d like to do coordination with our military forces on the ground because they’d like also to help in addressing the criminal acts committed by the so-called Abu Sayyaf Group,” Dureza said.
Dureza’s phone call to Misuari was a day after the MNLF chairman’s conversation with President Rodrigo Duterte over the administration’s comprehensive peace roadmap.