Malaysians, Indonesians, fighting alongside IS-linked rebels in Marawi

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29 May, 2017

The latest news on the conflict indicates that Philippines troops fired mortars in Marawi City as they battled Islamist militants of the Maute group who were holding hostages and were reported to have murdered at least 11 civilians.

President Rodrigo Duterte has promised full support for government troops fighting the Maute group in Marawi City in Lanao del Sur province.

In Manila, hundreds of protesters marched Friday to the presidential palace to oppose Duterte's declaration of martial law in the southern Mindanao region. He was wounded in a Philippine airstrike in January but got away.

Jo-Ar Herrera, a military spokesman, said 41 militants had been killed, with 10 more deaths after heavy fighting on Friday. But there are fears the expanded powers could further embolden a leader who already has been accused of allowing extrajudicial killings of thousands of people in his crackdown on illegal drugs.

Philippine intelligence indicates the two groups from different parts of Mindanao are connected, through Isnilon Hapilon, a leader of a radical faction of Abu Sayyaf.

"Hence, it is now increasingly becoming necessary to use more surgical airstrikes to clear the city and to bring this rebellion to a quicker end", AP quoted a military statement as saying.

"We suspect that but we're still validating", he said.

In a sign that the long-standing problem of militancy in the south could be expanding, Solicitor General Jose Calida said foreigners, including Indonesians and Malaysians, were fighting alongside the gunmen in Marawi.

"We will make this their cemetery", he said.

With much of Marawi a no-go zone, confusion reigned.

"Before it is just a local terrorist group, but now there is an ideology; they have subscribed to the ideology of the ISIS and they have pledged allegiance to flag of ISIS".

Hapilon's group has received a "couple of million dollars" from the Islamic State group, Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana told reporters without elaborating Friday.

Truckloads of marines were also seen driving into Marawi.

The United States regards Hapilon as one of the world's most risky terrorists, offering a bounty of US$5 million (RM21.3 million) for his capture. It is one of a number of hardline groups that split from the nation's biggest Muslim rebel organisation in anger at a planned peace accord.

One of his most important political allies, ex-president Fidel Ramos, said today that martial law across Mindanao was not justified, and called for it to be quickly revoked.

Galvez said that precision technology was being used to target the IS-linked Maute group in their hideouts.

Ms. Sereno, who obtained her undergraduate degree in economics at the Ateneo de Manila University, maintained that the Constitution "absolutely prohibits" the kind of martial law that the former President Ferdinand E. Marcos declared in September 1972.

She added: "Suffice it to say that the Martial Law power is an huge power that can be used for good, to solve defined emergencies; but all earthly powers when abused can result in oppression", she told the Ateneo graduates.


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