Good God…
I’m just waiting to find out who did this. Dare I say it has soemthing to do with the brutal Philippino Islamic terror group there calling themselves The Abu Sayyaf group?
Gunmen killed at least 21 people, a dozen journalists reported among them, in the Philippines on Monday in what a presidential adviser called the most “gruesome massacre of civilians” in recent history.Some of the bodies were beheaded, according to Filipino media. The details suggest the daytime abductions were politically motivated, and the military has said the gunmen were loyal to the province’s incumbent governor.
Those killed include a gubernatorial candidate’s wife and one of his sisters, according to two of his family members who spoke on local television. The death toll also included at least 12 journalists, according to Reporters Without Borders, a media freedom organization.
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Army officials said 100 gunmen surrounded the group of about 40 people — many local journalists and women among them — and ordered them out of their vehicles. They took the hostages to a mountainous region, officials said.
Some of the women were raped and tortured, according to media reports.
The military told state media that they found 21 bodies — 13 women and eight men — and that some had been beheaded.
“Never in the history of journalism have the news media suffered such a heavy loss of life in one day,” Reporters Without Borders said of the 12 journalists reported dead.
Some background on the Abu Sayyaf group
The group is responsible for the Philippines’ worst attacks since the 1990s, when it was formed by Islamic firebrand Abubakar Abdurajak Janjalani upon returning from Afghanistan where he fought Soviet forces alongside Osama bin Laden’s forces.
Western intelligence agencies say a brother-in-law of bin Laden provided the seed money to help set up the Abu Sayyaf.
The US State Department has included the group in its list of foreign terrorist organisations, and while many of its key leaders have been either captured or killed in recent years, intelligence officials have admitted it would be next to impossible to totally eradicate its influence.
It was set up supposedly to fight for a Muslim state in the south of this Catholic nation.
But when Janjalani was killed in a shoot-out with police in 1998, the Abu Sayyaf (Bearers of the Sword) quickly degenerated into a terror group with no known ideology.
It has kidnapped dozens of foreign aid workers, missionaries and tourists in the south and was blamed for the country’s worst terrorist strike, when it bombed a ferry in 2004 and killed over 100.
By ransoming off its hostages for millions of dollars the group was able to raise funds to buy more arms, and it cemented its brutal reputation by beheading some its captives — including an American tourist seized in 2002.
“The massive loss on the military side only shows that the Abu Sayyaf has become more entrenched,” in the south, Julkipli Wadi, an Islamic studies professor with the University of the Philippines who has closely followed the insurgency, told AFP.
He said massive poverty in the south, and perception of injustice against the minority Muslims made it easy for the Abu Sayyaf to continue with its recruitment efforts.
“These are the issues that help the Abu Sayyaf continue to wreck havoc in the area,” he said. “To the young Muslim, they are not terrorists, but a resistance force against any form of subjugation.”
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