Family of U.S. Missionary Hostage Shaken by News
June 07, 2002 06:37 AM ET
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The parents of U.S. missionary Martin Burnham, who was held hostage in the Philippines for more than a year, were shaken by the news of their son's death on Friday.
Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo said on Friday Burnham was killed and his wife Gracia wounded in heavy fighting between Philippine troops and Muslim guerrillas holding them hostage for over a year.
But Arroyo said Gracia was safe. Military officials said she was in a military hospital in southern Philippines.
When asked to comment on their son's ordeal and his missionary work, Paul and Oreta Burnham said, "We can't talk about that right now."
The missionary's parents, who live in Rose Hill, Kansas, said officials from the Philippine government called with the tragic news on Friday morning.
"They have Martin's body and Gracia's undergone surgery. Her leg is wounded and she's in stable condition," Oreta Burnham said.
The missionaries' three children had been on vacation with their maternal grandparents but are headed to Kansas, Oreta Burnham said. The elder Burnhams have been caring for Jeff, 15, Mindy, 12, and Zach, 11, since the kidnapping.
State Department officials and the New Tribes Mission, to which the Burnhams belong, had no immediate comment.
The American couple's nightmare began on May 27, 2001, a day after they arrived at a beach resort off Palawan island to celebrate their 18th wedding anniversary.
Abu Sayyaf gunmen, riding in motor boats, raided the resort at dawn, grabbing the Burnhams, another American and 17 Filipinos and spiriting them away across 300 miles (480 km) of sea to their hideout on Basilan.
The rebels later beheaded the third American, Guillermo Sobero, and some of the Filipinos. Others were freed for ransom.
Martin, 42, and Gracia, 43, were the longest-held foreign captives in the Philippines since Muslim separatists began seizing hostages in the 1970s to press for an Islamic state in the south of the mainly Catholic former U.S. colony.
The United States has linked the Abu Sayyaf to Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network, the prime suspects in the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.
In what is viewed as the second front of Washington's war against terror, about 1,000 U.S. soldiers are participating in a joint exercise in the southern Philippines to upgrade the skills of Filipino troops in fighting the Abu Sayyaf.