Seven dead in Philippines clashes with Islamist militants: Army
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Police inspecting the site of a bomb attack inside a gymnasium at Mindanao State University in Marawi on Dec 3, 2023.
PHOTO: AFP
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MANILA - Six soldiers and at least one Islamist militant have been killed in the southern Philippines, an army spokesman said on Feb 19, as security forces hunted down fighters believed to have bombed a Catholic mass in December 2023.
The clashes took place on Feb 18 in the jungle near the town of Munai on Mindanao island, Philippine army spokesman Louie Dema-ala told AFP.
“This is part of the operation against the Dawlah Islamiyah. Unfortunately, we sustained casualties,” he said.
Four Philippine soldiers were also wounded, he said, while the retreating gunmen left behind the body of a slain comrade.
The Dawlah group is one of several small, armed Islamist factions that have pledged allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), which claimed responsibility for a Dec 3, 2023, bombing of a Catholic mass in Marawi that killed at least four people and injured dozens of others.
The military said 10 other Dawlah members were killed in January, including the bombers’ alleged leader Khadafi Mimbesa.
Militant attacks on buses, Catholic churches and public markets have been a feature of decades-long unrest in the south.
Manila signed a peace pact with the nation’s largest rebel group, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, in 2014, ending its deadly armed rebellion.
But smaller bands of Muslim fighters opposed to the peace deal remain, including ISIS-linked militants. AFP
