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ISIS-Linked Group Storms Philippines City of Marawi City, Firefight With Soldiers Breaks Out

711 views 8 replies 4 participants last post by  Jay Valero 
#1 ·
Fascinating story. Will be interesting to watch it unfold.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...-street-battle-terrorist-jihadi-a7751406.html

Philippines soldiers battle Isis-linked gunmen on Marawi city streets

Army and police react with gunfire after residents in Marawi City raise alarm

A group of heavily-armed militants from a group linked to Isis have reportedly stormed a city in the Philippines and engaged in firefights with the national army.

Residents of Marawi City, in the south of the country, were urged to remain indoors as at least 15 gunmen from a Muslim rebel group called Maute stormed the streets brandishing assault rifles.

The group, which is also known as the Islamic State of Lanao, have reportedly received support from Isis.

Troops and a special police force were deployed to the city after residents in a nearby village raised the alarm and appealed for help.

President Rodrigo Duterte then declared martial law and a state of emergency in the province of Mindano. General Eduardo Ano, the military chief of staff, said at least one police officer was killed and eight soldiers were wounded in the fighting.

“I’m appealing to residents of Marawi City to stay home, drop on the ground if they hear gunshots," Mamintal Adiong Jr, the governor of the ​Lanao del Sur province told The Philippine Star newspaper. "They have to lock their doors and gates too."

Local reports suggested that the militants had entered a local hospital and raised a black Isis flag above the roof, although this information was officially verified by the army.

Witnesses reported seeing men in attire similar to that worn by Isis militants walking the streets before firing at houses and government buildings.

"There [were] no indications that an attack like this will happen. There are no checkpoints in the city," one resident said. "Everything is in silence. No news about the city government. Everything is vague."

Vice governor Mamintal Adiong Jr, a senior member of the Marawi council, said that local emergency response teams from across the region had been mobilised to help residents trapped in the crossfire.

In March, President Duterte pleaded for help from mayors in Muslim areas of the south of the country to deal with Islamist militants, and threatened to impose martial law there if the problem was not tackled.

Last year the president pledged to ignore human rights if the breakup of Isis in the Middle East worsened the Islamist insurgency in his country.

The Maute is a radical Islamist group composed of former Moro Islamic Liberation Front guerrillas and some foreign fighters.

They are thought to have taken their name from its founder Abdullah Maute.
 
#7 ·
This is really scary news all over the Philippines and some people are taking advantage of the situation by posting wrongful or misleading information which intensifies the paranoia. The Martial Law provisions today is different from the one declared by former President Marcos so there really should be no worry but the chances are the abuses might go unchecked for example if the military gets the wrong person and not those ones doing terrorist activities then it's gonna be one major fuck-up. The timing of this though, when the current President Duterte went for an official visit to Russia, a lot of people are speculating a lot of unconfirmed stuff. I just hope that this issue will conclude soon and not spread further.
 
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#2 ·
I read about this about 30 minutes ago.

Friend who grew up there had her family land and home taken over by Muslim groups. She talked about how embedded they ate in certain parts and they're basically areas one never strays into.

I didn't expect the groups to go quiet as they're very fanatical.
 
#3 ·
Yes, one of my mother's best friends is from the Philippines, @Miss Sally, and she noted how pervasive radical Islamism is throughout certain parts of the Philippines. This seems like the newest chapter in the ongoing struggle there. My mom's friend's sister was abducted and butchered by an Islamist splinter group there some years ago.

Quite a story here in any event.
 
#6 ·
I was going to mention more to the story but was on my phone.

The woman I worked with was a little girl when Islamic groups begun to start up, she lived in a small province near the bottom of the Philippines.

Her Grandfather owned a large swath of land, he was a fruit farmer. Many people in the area weren't rich but had land, most were farmers.

There had always been trouble with people down there acting out or being dipshits and disorderly but nothing that bad.

As time went on they begun noticing Arabs and Indos show up, which was odd because her area wasn't a tourist spot.

A few weeks later Muslims begin showing up with rocks and sticks demanding food etc, just causing trouble. They were no harm and were chased off.

A few months later those same people showed up with automatic weapons and the Police and people in power in her area didn't want to get involved and they began demanding things, it was only a short time later they begun killing people. A family near them was executed for being pig farmers, the person who lived in the house next to her had her son and husband killed when they went to confront this group harassing people.

They barely escaped thanks to this woman, had to leave almost all their stuff. The Government never gave compensation to her family, to anyone. They just kind of washed their hands of it all. Lots of people lost their lives and livelihoods to these Islamists. Of course it's barely a footnote to anyone outside of the country.

If you ever watched Destination Truth, a show where they hunt for mythical monsters, the team went out to the remote Philippines and had to have armed guards and couldn't stay out late as Islamic groups were in the area, would pose as fake soldiers, rob people and kidnap them. They were huge targets because they were white. Seems kind of racist but cannot be racist to white people I suppose.

The situation is bad, oddly enough a similar situation is happening with Mexico, just by cartels and not by Islamic groups.
 
#5 ·
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/philippine-church-priest-churchgoers-hostage-47601438

Priest among 14 hostages taken in siege of Philippines city

By jim gomez and teresa cerojano, associated press

MANILA, Philippines — May 24, 2017, 5:22 AM ET

Muslim extremists abducted a Catholic priest and more than a dozen churchgoers while laying siege to a southern Philippine city overnight, burning buildings, ambushing soldiers and hoisting flags of the Islamic State group, officials said Wednesday. President Rodrigo Duterte declared martial law in the southern third of the nation and warned he would enforce it harshly.

The violence erupted Tuesday night after the army raided the hideout of Isnilon Hapilon, an Abu Sayyaf commander who is on Washington's list of most-wanted terrorists with a reward of up to $5 million for his capture. The militants called for reinforcements from an allied group, the Maute, and some 50 gunmen managed to enter the city of Marawi.

"We are in a state of emergency," Duterte said after landing in Manila from a visit to Moscow, adding that skirmishes were continuing. "I have a serious problem in Mindanao and the ISIS footprints are everywhere."

He said he may declare martial law elsewhere in the Philippines if militants expand their attacks.

Archbishop Socrates Villegas, president of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines, and Marawi Bishop Edwin de la Pena said the militants forced their way into the Marawi Cathedral and seized a priest, 10 worshippers and three church workers.

The priest, Father Chito, and the others had no role in the conflict, Villegas said.

"He was not a combatant. He was not bearing arms. He was a threat to none," Villegas said of Chito. "His capture and that of his companions violates every norm of civilized conflict."

Villegas says the gunmen are demanding the government recall its forces.

Duterte declared martial rule for 60 days in the entire Mindanao region, the restive southern third of the Philippine archipelago. He had vowed to be "harsh."

"I warned everybody not to force my hand into it," Duterte said on a plane en route to the Philippines on Wednesday. "I have to do it to preserve the republic."

Martial law allows Duterte to harness the armed forces to carry out arrests, searches and detentions more rapidly. He has repeatedly threatened to place the south, the scene of decades-long Muslim separatist uprisings, under martial law. But human rights groups have expressed fears that martial law powers could further embolden Duterte, whom they have accused of allowing extrajudicial killings of thousands of drug suspects in a crackdown on illegal drugs.

Details from inside Marawi were sketchy because the largely Muslim city of more than 200,000 people appeared to be largely sealed off and without electricity.

"The whole of Marawi city is blacked out, there is no light, and there are Maute snipers all around," Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana said late Tuesday in Moscow, where he was accompanying Duterte on an official trip. Duterte cut the trip short and headed back to the Philippines.

Lorenzana said dozens of gunmen occupied city hall, a hospital and a jail and burned a Catholic church, a college and some houses in an assault that killed at least two soldiers and a police officer and wounded 12 others.

Hapilon, an Arabic-speaking Islamic preacher known for his expertise on commando assaults, pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group in 2014. He is a commander of the Abu Sayyaf militant group and was wounded by a military airstrike in January.

Troops sealed off major entry and exit points to prevent Hapilon from escaping, military chief of staff Gen. Eduardo Ano told The Associated Press by telephone late Tuesday from Moscow, where he was accompanying Duterte.

"We will conduct house-to-house clearing and do everything to remove the threat there. We can do that easily," Ano said, but added it was more difficult in an urban setting because of the need to avoid civilian casualties.

He said the group erected Islamic State flags at several locations.

Duterte met late Tuesday with Russian President Vladimir Putin and said he is counting on Russia to supply weapons for the Philippines to fight terrorism.

"Of course, our country needs modern weapons, we had orders in the United States, but now the situation there is not very smooth and in order to fight the Islamic State, with their units and factions, we need modern weapons," he said, according to Russian state news agency Tass.

While pursuing peace talks with two large Muslim rebel groups in the south of this predominantly Roman Catholic nation, Duterte has ordered the military to destroy smaller extremist groups which have tried to align with the Islamic State group.

The Maute group is one of less than a dozen new armed Muslim groups that have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State and formed a loose alliance with Hapilon reportedly designated as the alliance's leader.

The Maute has been blamed for a bombing that killed 15 people in southern Davao city, Duterte's hometown, last September and a number of attacks on government forces in Lanao, although it has faced setbacks from a series of military offensives.

Last month, troops backed by airstrikes killed dozens of Maute militants and captured their jungle camp near Lanao del Sur's Piagapo town. Troops found homemade bombs, grenades, combat uniforms and passports of suspected Indonesian militants in the camp, the military said.

———

Associated Press writer Jim Heintz in Moscow contributed to this report.
 
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