Islamist militants rampaging through a southern Philippine city beheaded a local police chief, President Rodrigo Duterte said Wednesday, even as there were reports that the Maute group had also taken hostages, including a Catholic priest.
President Duterte disclosed the news of the Maute beheading of a local police official in his speech upon his arrival from Moscow on Wednesday afternoon.
He said the attack occurred near the southern city of Marawi, which is under siege by Islamic militants, as justification for imposing martial law across the southern third of the country.
“The chief of police in Malabang on his way home, going back he was stopped by a checkpoint manned by terrorists and I think they decapitated them right then and there,” Duterte told a news conference.
The Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) President Archbishop Socrates Villegas identified the clergy taken hostage by the Maute terrorist group as Catholic priest Chito Suganob.
Villegas said Suganob and his companions were in the Cathedral of our Lady Help of Christians when “members of the Maute fighting group forced their way into the Cathedral” taking with them Suganob and the others as hostages.
“They have threatened to kill the hostages if the government forces unleashed against them are not recalled.”
In a statement, Villegas appealed to the hostage takers to release the priest and his companions.
He said that Suganob, at the time of his capture, was in the performance of his duty as a priest.
“He was not a combatant. He was not bearing arms. He was a threat to none. His capture and that of his companions violates every norm of civilized conflict,” he said.
Duterte announced on Tuesday night that martial law had been imposed across the southern region of Mindanao, after Islamist militants rampaged through the city of Marawi and engaged in deadly clashes with security forces.
The fighting in Marawi, a mostly Muslim-populated city of 200,000 people, erupted on Tuesday afternoon after security forces raided a house where they believed Isnilon Hapilon, a leader of the infamous Abu Sayyaf kidnap gang and Philippine head of the Islamic State group, was hiding.
The United States regards Hapilon as one of the world’s most dangerous terrorists, offering a bounty of $5 million for his capture.
More than 100 gunmen responded to the raid by burning buildings and conducting other diversionary tactics, officials said, adding that thousands of residents have fled Marawi.
Police said an officer and two soldiers had been killed in the fighting, with at least eight others injured.
It was unclear if the ambush on the local police chief was included in the official tally.
Duterte said continuing sporadic skirmishes showed the group’s “capability to sow terror and unleash harassment and inflict destruction” across the country’s south.
The president flew home Wednesday from Moscow, where he had cut short an official visit to Russia to deal with the Marawi crisis.
(Agence France Presse)