Meanwhile, 16 US intelligence agents are scheduled to arrive in the coming weeks to make an aerial inspection of Basilan and Sulu, where the Abu Sayyaf is holed out, National Security Adviser Roilo Golez said yesterday.
However, Golez said the Americans will not be involved in any military operation to rescue American missionary couple Martin and Gracia Burnham, who were kidnapped from the Dos Palmas beach resort in Palawan last May 27.
Col. Hermogenes Esperon, commander of an Army unit battling the Abu Sayyaf, said troops on patrol found the three "haggard and tired" workers stumbling through the jungle a few hours before amid sporadic fighting.
Brothers Zardi and Bertam Benasing and Michael Abellon were among more than a dozen workers whom the Abu Sayyaf kidnapped last June 11 from the Golden Harvest coconut plantation in Basilan.
Still in Abu Sayyaf captivity are plantation workers Rodrigo Solon, Abdul Tata Mohammad, Roel Abellon, Ruleen Balderamos Jr., Marlon Dinaganon, and Reynaldo Anskan; and four Dos Palmas hostages and four from a hospital in Lamitan town.
Esperon said the former hostages would be quizzed to help the military locate the rest of the captives.
Last Sunday, troops stumbled on the main Abu Sayyaf group in the outskirts of Basilan’s capital city of Isabela, setting off a clash that killed 21 bandits.
Bertam said they managed to escape while fetching water for the bandits and the rest of the victims last Thursday night near the border of Barangays Balatanay and Tairan in Lantawan.
"We escaped because we could not stand it any longer in the mountains, We escaped while fetching water," he said in the dialect.
The younger Zardi described their ordeal as "very dangerous especially during encounters (with the military). "I thought my life would end there," he said.
Abellon, who is apparently suffering from the "Stockholm syndrome," said he has embraced Islam after he was baptized by the Abu Sayyaf and named him Abduhraman.
He said the other Christian captives were also indoctrinated into Islam.
"I believe Islam is the best religion and I will continue this and will never go back to Christianity, Abellon added.
Another captive, Faizal Benasing, escaped earlier this week from the Abu Sayyaf as troops were closing on their positions in the Basilan jungle.
The 17-year-old Faizal told reporters yesterday the Burnhams are being treated well by their captors, but that he had not seen Sobero.
"They are treating the Americans with respect... maybe because they are foreigners," he said in the local dialect.
Faizal said he last saw the Burnhams late last month when he and other farmers were separated from the remaining hostages that had come from Dos Palmas.
"The captives survived on cassava and other root crops, dried fish and rice," he said. "About once a week the (bandits) somehow would acquire chicken and beef, which meant a feast for the hostages."
Faizal, his arms and legs heavily bruised, sobbed repeatedly while narrating his ordeal to reporters and Armed Forces chief Gen. Diomedio Villanueva.
"All we did was to run and hide from soldiers," he said. "It was really very difficult and oftentimes I would remember my family, my brother and friends." – With reports from Paolo Romero