A Filipino soldier kidnapped last week by Abu Sayyaf terrorists was found beheaded in Sulu shortly after three members of the Islamic State-linked group were killed in a clash on Bohol.
The head and body of Sergeant Anni Siraji of the Army’s 32nd Infantry Battalion was found in Patikul town, Brigadier General Cirilito Sobejana, commander of the Joint Task Force Sulu, said.
Sobejana said Siraji was probably abducted and executed because of his involvement in peace initiatives in Sulu.
“He is involved in peace efforts. He is not actually a combatant. We are using him to engage stakeholders because he is a Tausog (like most Abu Sayyaf militants),” he told Reuters today.
Earlier yesterday, government troops had killed three more Abu Sayyaf militants on the island of Bohol where they were hiding after a failed attempt to kidnap tourists.
The military was pursuing two or three more militants still at large, hundreds of miles from their usual strongholds in the south of the country.
“We have reports indicating that they were also wounded and running out of supplies,” Colonel Edgard Arevalo, chief of the military’s public affairs office, said.