Posted on 12/23/2004 3:27:46 AM PST by Straight Vermonter
The military said on Wednesday that it was still hunting for the leader of the Muslim Abu Sayyaf group, expressing doubts about reports that Khaddafy Janjalani was killed in air strikes in November.
Last week, the United States added Janjalani to a group of militants whose finances are blocked, calling him a “despicable terrorist, responsible for the kidnappings and beheadings of American civilians.”
Besides Abu Sayyaf, soldiers are fighting several other Muslim rebel groups and a communist insurgency in rural areas.
Lt. Colonel Pascual Buenaventura, spokesman for the Army, said troops were looking for Janjalani in marshy regions of the southern island of Mindanao, where he was believed to be hiding.
“Our efforts to get him continue without letup,” Pascual told reporters. “We have no confirmation on his supposed death. It’s difficult to speculate and assume he died based on third-hand information.”
On Monday, an army commander in Mindanao said informants had reported Janjalani was among several suspected Muslim militants killed when helicopter gunship fired rockets at rebel hideouts in November.
Col. Jerry Jalandoni said the reports described the militant leader’s body being wrapped in a plastic bag, placed in a wooden box and buried in Mamasapano.
On Wednesday Janjalani’s parents told reporters two men visited them two weeks ago to bring news that their youngest son died in a gun battle last month.
Killing Janjalani would be an important victory for the Philippines as it tries to assure the United States and other allies that Manila is doing its part in the war on terror.
But Army and Navy intelligence officials told Reuters Janjalani could still be alive because they continued to get reports of sightings in several areas of Mindanao.
Analysis of intercepted electronic communications also suggest Janjalani had not been killed, an army intelligence source said.
“Unless his body is produced, we assume Janjalani is still alive,” he said.
The country’s largest Muslim rebel group, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), said there was no proof Janjalani died in Datu Piang.
“Based on our own investigation, there were no casualties in the air strikes,” MILF spokesman Eid Kabalu told Reuters by phone. “He was not even in that area during the attack.”
Kabalu said residents of a nearby village had buried an old man in Mamasapano on the same day, not Janjalani.
The US State Department labeled Abu Sayyaf as a terrorist organization in 2002 for its role in bombings and kidnappings in the country and for its suspected links with al-Qaeda.
Abu Sayyaf claimed responsibility for a bomb that sank a ferry near Manila in February, killing more than 100 people. The government played down the claim at first but said in October that Abu Sayyaf had carried out the attack.
MILF spokesman Eid Kabalu
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