TWO more government troops were killed and another was wounded after a suspected Abu Sayyaf struck a military installation in Sulu in what appeared to be a retaliatory attack to avenge the 26 deaths the extremists have sustained in two weeks of intermittent fighting in Mindanao.
Maj. Filemon Tan, spokesman of the military’s Western Mindanao Command, said the Abu Sayyaf extremists attacked the headquarters of the 22nd Marine Company at Sitio Palan, Barangay Mampallam, in Talipao, Sulu at 2 a.m. Monday.
The latest deaths brings to nine the number of government troops killed in fighting that started when the military swept down on an Abu Sayyaf lair where Malaysian bomber Mohammed Najib Husen, supposedly the chief aide of known Islamic State sympathizer Dr. Mahmud Ahmad, was hiding.
Husen was killed after government troops attacked an Abu Sayyaf base at Barangagay Makalang in Al Barka, Basilan where Abu Sayyaf built a training camp with 28 structures including 10 dug-in bunkers that can accommodate up to 250 people.
Three government troopers were killed in that attack, Tan said, while four more soldiers were killed as the extremists attacked a military outpost in Sulu last week.
Husen, also known in Mindanao as “Anu Anas,” is believed to be right-hand man of Dr. Ahmad, who fled Malaysia after being tagged as a member of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria along with Huesen and another Malaysian islamist Muhammad Joraoimee Awang Raimee.
Aside from the Abu Sayyaf, another extremist group is believed to be coddling foreign jihadists, one of whom was Indonesian bomb maker Sucipto Ibrahim Ali, also known in Mindanao as Ustadz Abu Fatah and was killed in another military operation in Sultan Kudarat last November.
The group is known as Ansar al-Khilafa Philippines as is known to be recruiting potential Filipinos jihadists from among the Muslims communities in the Philippines.
Despite the killing of two known foreign jihadists, however, Malacañang insisted that there is no credible evidence to show that jihadists have already infiltrated and have set up training in the Philippines.
“[The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria] has no training camps in the Philippines,” Communications Secretary Herminio Coloma Jr. told Palace reporters last week.
“What ISIS-linked personalities have done is to try to link-up with local jihadist/terrorist groups,” Coloma said. “Some of these ISIS-linked personalities, who are really few in number, have also sought refuge in the base areas of these local terrorist groups.”