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Wednesday, September 28, 2005
Navy seizes 2 tons of explosives in Basilan
By Al Jacinto
ZAMBOANGA CITY -- Troops raided a suspected Abu Sayyaf hideout on an island off Basilan in Mindanao before sunrise Tuesday and seized more than two tons of chemicals and blasting caps used in the manufacture of homemade explosives, officials said.
They said elite members of the naval anti-terror Task Force 61, backed by amphibious vehicles, stormed Pilas island near Basilan and raided the hideout where they recovered 42 bags of ammonium nitrate and boxes of blasting caps, including barrels of gasoline.
Mindanao navy chief Commodore Rufino Lopez said the raid was part of an anti-terror campaign in the troubled region, where security forces are battling Abu Sayyaf militants with links to Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network. "There is an ongoing anti-terror operation," Lopez said.
He did not say how many soldiers and amphibious vehicles were used in the operation, except that their number was sizable.
Lopez said there was no firefight and troops made no arrests, but security forces are still scouring the island, a former Abu Sayyaf base, for weapons and explosives.
He said troops raided the island after weeks of surveillance operations. "After the Abu Sayyaf bombed Zamboanga and Basilan, we have doubled our efforts to track down the terrorists and break their operation in the south, and so far, we are gaining grounds in our campaign," he said.
Last week, soldiers also arrested seven alleged Abu Sayyaf militants and seized a small cache of weapons after storming their hideout in Bongao town in Tawi-Tawi province. The military said the group was believed behind the June 2002 kidnapping of four Indonesian sailors off Basilan Island.
Abu Sayyaf militants detonated two powerful bombs in Zamboanga City's business district in July, wounding 26 people, and also bombed a ferry last month in Basilan, killing three.
The United States listed the Abu Sayyaf as a foreign terrorist organization and froze its assets abroad.
Philippine authorities said the Abu Sayyaf has links with the al Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiya terror groups. Washington offered as much as $5 million bounty for the capture of known Abu Sayyaf leaders, including its chieftain Khadaffy Janjalani, for the killing of two kidnapped US citizens in 2002 in the southern Philippines. (Sun.Star Zamboanga/Sunnex)
(September 28, 2005 issue)
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