2 Sayyaf bombers captured in Isabela City

ZAMBOANGA CITY – Security forces captured 2 Abu Sayyaf bombers in a daring operation in Isabela City in Basilan, one of 5 provinces under the restive Muslim autonomous region in southern Philippines, police said Wednesday.

Police said the duo – Mudzrim Ilaman and Kadir Ajanal – were tracked down before dusk Tuesday in the village called Menzi. Policemen, backed by soldiers, seized improvised explosives from the militants.

It was not immediately known whether the duo was planning an attack in Basilan or a strike in Zamboanga City, but police were interrogating the militants.

Police said the 2 men were followers of a notorious Abu Sayyaf leader Furuji Indama, whose group pledged allegiance to the terrorist group Islamic State of Syria and Iraq or Daesh.

Basilan is a major stronghold of the Abu Sayyaf also called Al Harakatul Al-Islamiya, which has been founded in the province in the early 1990s by Ustadz Abdurajak Abubakar Janjalani, who was killed by the police in 1998.

Since then, the Abu Sayyaf - which was originally fighting for a Muslim homeland - split into many small groups and expanded in Sulu and other nearby provinces and eventually resorted to terrorism and ransom kidnappings to finance its violent campaign in the troubled South. (Zamboanga Post)

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