Exterminate Abus - Erap
By Joel R. San Juan and Faber Concepcion
EXTERMINATE
them!
Looking like
one who has lost his patience, President Estrada issued this directive to the military
yesterday even as he ordered the troops to give top priority to the lives of the hostages.
Mr. Estrada,
who flew yesterday to Zamboanga City, near Jolo, to be briefed on the fighting and
broadcast a radio message to encourage the troops, directed the military and police to
deter the Abu Sayyaf bandits or any other groups from engaging in further kidnapping
activities and put an immediate end to the crisis.
“We are
banking on you,” he told Gen. Narciso Abaya, commander of the Army’s 1st
Infantry Division. Abaya replied that the assault would be completed in three days to a
week.
The Chief
Executive ordered the military to give top priority to the lives of the hostages, but
added: “We should destroy the Abu Sayyaf so they can no longer engage in kidnapping
activities.”
Chief of Staff
Angelo Reyes said in a press briefing that there have been six engagements between
government forces, composed of 5,000 soldiers and policemen, and the bandits since
Saturday; the clashes have yielded six dead and 20 captured bandits.
Four troopers were
wounded in the action.
Reyes said he
expects the “Task Force Trident” to complete its job in three to six days.
Hostages
missing
Military mortars
pounded the camps of Muslim bandits yesteday as thousands of troops pressed on to free 19
foreign and Filipino hostages for a second day with no signs of finding the hostages,
officials said.
“They haven’t
been eyeballed,” said Press Secretary Ricardo Puno. “The rebels are clearly
moving them from place to place.”
Officials said
they had no evidence supporting unconfirmed reports that some of the hostages had been
killed.
“As far as
our assessment is concerned, they are all believed to be alive,” according to Defense
Secretary Orlando Mercado, one of the top officials who accompanied Mr. Estrada.
Both Puno and
Mercado, along with Interior and Local Government Secretary Alfredo Lim, Trade and
Industry Secretary Mar Roxas, accompanied Mr. Estrada on his visit to Zamboanga City.
The military
imposed a news blackout after launching the pre-dawn attack Saturday aimed at rescuing the
hostages, including six foreigners, held by the Abu Sayyaf rebels on Sulu Island.
Clashes
Officials said
clashes were continuing yesterday and that the military had overrun two rebel camps,
including the area where two French journalists had been held, but found no hostages.
Residents said
mortars were relentlessly pounding rebel positions in the hills of Jolo.
One woman died and
four other civilians were being treated at a Jolo hospital. They said they were in a group
of about 10 people strafed by the military because one was wearing camouflage clothing.
Four government
soldiers were wounded in the fighting, Mercado said.
Puno said four
bodies of rebels were recovered and 18 guerrillas had been taken captive.
Before they began
their kidnapping spree in March, the heavily-armed Abu Sayyaf had fewer than 200 members.
That ballooned to more than 3,000 as large ransoms reportedly paid by Libya and Malaysia
attracted many new recruits on impoverished Jolo, the military says.
Cease-fire
Rebel leader
Ghalib “Robot” Andang called a government emissary after the attack began
Saturday and asked for a cease-fire, but did not offer to release the hostages, chief
government negotiator Robert Aventajado said.
Aventajado said
the chances of the request being accepted by the government were “almost nil.”
Mr. Estrada
announced Saturday that he decided to order the assault after the rebels, who claim to be
fighting for an independent Islamic state, seized a new group of hostages from Malaysia on
Sept. 10.
France, Germany
and Malaysia expressed concern that the attack could endanger the lives of the captives.
Various Abu Sayyaf
factions are holding an American Muslim, two French journalists, three Malaysians, a
Filipino captured in April and 12 Filipino Christian evangelists.
The military said
it did not believe an unconfirmed report that the American, Jeffrey Schilling of Oakland,
California, was killed during an escape attempt Friday.
“We believe
he is still alive. There is a strong possibility he is still alive,” Mercado said.
The military also
was attempting to verify unconfirmed reports that the evangelists were executed by a rebel
firing squad after the military attack began, and that the French journalists had escaped.
“All of these
have not been confirmed, and no bodies (of hostages) have been found,” Puno said.
At her Oakland
apartment, Schilling’s mother said she had no word on her son. “No news is good
news, as far as I am concerned,” Carol Schilling told journalists, then broke down
crying.
Attack threat
The rebels had
earlier threatened to attack southern Philippine cities and behead Schilling if troops
launched an attack.
Telephone and
transportation links to Jolo were cut, isolating panicked villagers who streamed into the
island’s capital and snapped up goods in crowded grocery stores.
Support for a
military assault has soared since the rebels abducted three more people last week from a
Malaysian diving resort—despite their earlier pledge not to seize more captives while
negotiations were underway.
The kidnapping
came just one day after the rebels released four Europeans—the last foreigners from a
group of 21 people abducted April 23 from another Malaysian resort.
France unhappy
French President
Jacques Chirac criticized the assault, saying he was concerned it might put the French
journalists in danger.
“The safety
of Roland Madura and Jean-Jacques Le Garrec is France’s only priority, and we
consider the Philippines responsible for this,” Chirac’s spokeswoman, Catherine
Colonna, said Saturday.
Malaysian Deputy
Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said he was concerned about the safety of the
Malaysian hostages, but that “what the Philippine Army does against separatist groups
or those out to create chaos in the country is its own responsibility.”
Puno echoed that
sentiment.
“This is a
matter that the Philippines has to decide on its own,” he said. “Because after
all, when the French leave, we will be left with the problem here in our country.”
Negotiations for
the remaining hostages had been suspended because of rising tension among Abu Sayyaf
factions over the division of ransom money from the release of earlier hostages.
Negotiators say
more than $15 million in ransom has been paid, about $10 million of it by Libya for 10
Westerners.
Critics had warned
that large ransom payments would encourage new waves of kidnappings in the troubled
southern Philippines, home of the country’s Muslim minority.
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