Philippine hostage island rescue operation hits
snag: officials
JOLO, Philippines, Sept 29
(AFP) - A two-week long military rescue operation for 17 hostages in the southern
Philippines has run into "difficulties," senior officials conceded Friday.
Tactical mistakes, a hostile
civilian population and fleet-footed Abu Sayyaf guerrillas who are holding the hostages
have conspired to frustrate the 4,000-strong security forces engaged in the assault on
southern Jolo island, the officials said.
Ferry services resumed Friday
as the navy lifted its blockade of Jolo, but most communication facilities are still
disabled to deny the rebels the means to coordinate their activities.
Elite Marines, police Special
Action Forces and Army Scout Rangers, trained in anti-guerrilla jungle warfare, landed in
Jolo on September 16 to "destroy" the 400-member Muslim extremist group and
spring 19 hostages who include three Malaysians, two Frenchmen and an American.
Except for the two Frenchmen
who managed to escape last week, the operation has not made much headway. Officials are
unsure when the remaining 17 captives can be freed.
"From the very start, we
experienced difficulties. It was easy for them (Abu Sayyaf) to escape because our troops
had to come from outside," said Major-General Narciso Abaya, the overall commander of
the Jolo assault.
He then "made the wrong
assumption that the enemy would fight us back" but they took flight instead.
"This will take some
time."
Abaya had led a military
assault of a mountaintop Abu Sayyaf camp in nearby Basilan island in May and rescued most
of a separate group of Filipino hostages from the guerillas after intelligence feedback
from the local population.
But in Jolo, "we don't
have that luxury."
Defense Secretary Orlando
Mercado has described the rebels as "folk heroes, in a sense," because they
shared with relatives and neighbors ransoms they raised from the April 23 abduction of a
group of 21 western tourists and resort staff from a neighbouring Malaysian resort.
President Joseph Estrada
ordered the assault after all but one of the original hostages had been freed, because the
rebels grabbed new hostages to perpetuate the crisis.
Mercado observed Friday that
during the negotiations, the government ordered the military to pull back under pressure
from France, Germany, Finland, and other countries with captive citizens.
Looking back, "moving the
soldiers back to barracks was a mistake."
Mercado later got into a
shouting match with the president of a government university here who requested him to
order a stop to the military operation.
"The military is violating
the people," said Jamsali Jawali of the Sulu State College. "There are still
other ways to resolve the crisis."
Mercado told the official he
was "disappointed" to hear that he held this view.
He said civil rights monitors
would be flown to Jolo and be allowed to "go around so that there would be factual
reporting."
A Jolo priest, Roman Catholic
Father Romeo Villanueva, issued a separate statement about the "suffering" of
the Jolo people, and voiced doubts over the military's capacity to finish off the Abu
Sayyaf and rescue the hostages.
Mercado flew into Jolo on
Friday with two truckloads of food and other relief supplies for the nearly 63,000 people
displaced by the fighting.
The displaced make up more than
16 percent of the island's population.
Magdar Loong, the mayor of
Parang town said seven children died of diarrhoea from the evacuation camps this week.
General Abaya insisted Friday:
"We believe we are closing in slowly but surely."
He said the guerrillas were
using civilians "to buy supplies in the populated areas, but these have been
neutralized."
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