A Sri Lankan peace activist became the latest victim of a wave of kidnappings in the southern Philippines blamed on al-Qaeda-linked militants, officials said yesterday.
Omar Jalil, 36, from the nonpartisan group Nonviolent Peaceforce, which has been monitoring a Muslim separatist uprising in the Philippines, was taken by nine gunmen from his residence in coastal Lamitan on Basilan island early yesterday, Basilan police chief Salik Macapantar said.
The Filipino caretaker of the house managed to escape unharmed even as the gunmen opened fire, he said.
The caretaker was now guiding the navy and marines in combing the jungle hinterlands of Lamitan to try to locate the hostage, provincial vice governor Al-Rasheed Sakalahul said.
Suspected Abu Sayyaf militants, notorious for ransom kidnappings and terror attacks, are holding three teachers and a lending company employee on Basilan as well as three Red Cross workers, including one Swiss and one Italian, on nearby Jolo island.
All were kidnapped this year, apparently as part of efforts by Abu Sayyaf to raise badly needed funds after several of its leaders with connections to Middle Eastern financiers were killed in US-backed offensives in recent years.
Abu Sayyaf, which has more than 300 fighters, is on a US blacklist of terrorist organizations because of links to al-Qaeda and its involvement in kidnappings, beheadings and bombings.
At least two militants holding the three Red Cross hostages were killed and nine marines wounded in a clash on Monday when the captors attempted to break through a military cordon that has boxed them in, Brigadier General Gaudencio Pangilinan said. The hostages were believed to be unhurt, he said.
Officials have been hesitant to resort to a military rescue and have asked about 30 Abu Sayyaf gunmen to surrender their captives unconditionally. Speculation has mounted about a ransom demand ranging from US$5 million to US$10 million.
CONDITIONS: The Russian president said a deal that was scuppered by ‘elites’ in the US and Europe should be revived, as Ukraine was generally satisfied with it Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday said that he was ready for talks with Ukraine, after having previously rebuffed the idea of negotiations while Kyiv’s offensive into the Kursk region was ongoing. Ukraine last month launched a cross-border incursion into Russia’s Kursk region, sending thousands of troops across the border and seizing several villages. Putin said shortly after there could be no talk of negotiations. Speaking at a question and answer session at Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin said that Russia was ready for talks, but on the basis of an aborted deal between Moscow’s and Kyiv’s negotiators reached in Istanbul, Turkey,
In months, Lo Yuet-ping would bid farewell to a centuries-old village he has called home in Hong Kong for more than seven decades. The Cha Kwo Ling village in east Kowloon is filled with small houses built from metal sheets and stones, as well as old granite buildings, contrasting sharply with the high-rise structures that dominate much of the Asian financial hub. Lo, 72, has spent his entire life here and is among an estimated 860 households required to move under a government redevelopment plan. He said he would miss the rich history, unique culture and warm interpersonal kindness that defined life in
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A French woman whose husband has admitted to enlisting dozens of strangers to rape her while she was drugged on Thursday told his trial that police had saved her life by uncovering the crimes. “The police saved my life by investigating Mister Pelicot’s computer,” Gisele Pelicot told the court in the southern city of Avignon, referring to her husband — one of 51 of her alleged abusers on trial — by only his surname. Speaking for the first time since the extraordinary trial began on Monday, Gisele Pelicot, now 71, revealed her emotion in almost 90 minutes of testimony, recounting her mysterious