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MANILA (Xinhua): Philippine troops found the body of an Indonesian kidnapping victim in the southern Philippine province of Sulu, the armed forces said on Wednesday (September 30).
Lt. Col. Ruben Guinolbay, commander of the Army’s 45th Infantry Battalion, said troops found the body in the Sulu town of Patikul on Tuesday afternoon while pursuing terrorists.
The military did not identify the kidnapping victim, but said he could be one of five Indonesian fishermen abducted by Abu Sayyaf terrorists in Sabah waters in January.
Guinolbay said the troops were “traversing” the route taken by the fleeing terrorists when they found the body about 300 meters from the meeting place in Maligay, a village near the town of Patikul.
Major General Corleto Vinluan, the commanding general of the army’s Western Mindanao Command, said the kidnappers killed the kidnapping victim while trying to escape during the shooting.
The Abu Sayyaf Group is considered the smallest but most violent extremist group in the southern Philippines. The group, which has approximately 200 fighters, is active in the impoverished island provinces of Sulu and Basilan.
The group is responsible for a series of ransom kidnappings, deadly bombings, ambushes of security personnel, public beheadings, assassinations and extortion in the Mindanao region.
The group, which has been terrorizing the southern region of the Philippines since the 1990s, preys on foreign tourists, businessmen and fishermen not only from the Philippines but also from Indonesia and Malaysia and hides them in Philippine jungles or remote islands.
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