In the worst wave of violence in the Philippines for many years, four Filipino hostages were killed and five others, including children, were wounded; Muslim insurgents seized over 100 new hostages and launched grenades at an airport; and bomb explosions at a major port killed four people.
With the growing confusion it has been impossible to reconcile contradictory reports about casualties among the 21 mostly foreign hostages seized from a Malaysian island on Sunday. The chief negotiator seeking their release said yesterday evening that two were wounded during gun battles on Tuesday evening between troops and their captors.
A local government official on Jolo, 960 km south of Manila, also said all 21 hostages were alive. However, a spokesman for the Abu Sayyaf (Father of the Sword) militia, which kidnapped the group, had earlier told TV stations that a male Caucasian hostage was killed by a stray bullet and a Caucasian woman died of a heart attack during the fighting on Jolo Island.
On the nearby island of Basilan, 10 Filipino hostages, including seven children, from a group of at least 27, were recovered unhurt in dramatic developments yesterday. They were released after gun battles between troops and bands of insurgents from the 15,000 strong Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) which is seeking an independent Minandao.
The Philippine Defence Secretary, Mr Orlando Mercado, said at least four hostages were killed and five, including three children, were wounded. He discounted earlier reports that 10 hostages may have been killed. "The troops are still looking for the other hostages," he said.
The children were among scores of people abducted in raids on two high schools on Basilan on March 20th. Some were released subsequently but at least 29 of the hostages, including 22 children, were held captive in a rebel camp on a Basilan hilltop for over a month. After the group claimed to have killed two male hostages, the army launched an assault on the camp on April 23rd. By Sunday they had overrun the camp but the hostages had disappeared.
Most Muslim separatists signed a peace deal with the government of the mainly Catholic Philippines in 1996 but Abu Sayyaf and the MILF rejected the agreement and have continued their decades-long fight for Muslim self-rule. They are concentrated on Mindanao island, where most of the five million Muslims in the country's 74 million population live.
The 1,000-strong Abu Sayyaf group has long made a practice of taking hostages for ransom. It is this group which seized the holiday-makers from a diving resort in Malaysia. The governments of the foreign nationals have appealed to the Philippine government not to launch a military assault on the camp where they are held. The 21 hostages are 10 Malaysians, three Germans, two French, two South Africans, two Finns, one Lebanese and a Filipina.
One soldier was reported killed in the fighting on Tuesday to free them and several wounded. Another wounded soldier was evacuated yesterday after a battle which lasted about an hour.
Elsewhere, MILF guerrillas fired rocket-propelled grenades at an airport and military camp near Cotabato yesterday but caused no serious casualties. Scheduled air traffic was cancelled. Rebels also took over stretches of a highway near Cotabato and were holding 100 people from vehicles they had seized.
Explosions yesterday morning killed at least four people and injured 30 in the largely Catholic city of General Santos.