4 Abu Sayyaf members killed in Jolo shootout

COTABATO CITY, Philippines — State operatives killed four Abu Sayyaf members, two of them wanted kidnappers, in a shootout in Jolo town in Sulu before dawn Sunday.

The fatalities, Injam Yadah and three others, two of them identified as Al-Al Sawadjaan and a certain Rauf, died on the spot from multiple gunshot wounds.

Investigators from the Sulu provincial police are still trying to identify the fourth fatality.

Brig. Gen. Eden Ugale, director of the Police Regional Office-Bangsamoro Autonomous Region, said a team of policemen and Army combatants were to peacefully arrest Yadah and Sawadjaan but neutralized them and their two companions instead for provoking a gunfight.

Lt. Gen. Corleto Vinluan, Jr. of the military’s Western Mindanao Command confirmed the demise of the four Abu Sayyaf members in a statement released on Friday morning.

Yadah and Sawadjaan were tagged in the abduction of more than a dozen wealthy residents in Sulu and in the nearby Zamboanga peninsula.

Local officials told reporters the duo and their accomplices had kidnapped a physician in Jolo, the spouse of Mayor Tambrin Tulawie of Talipao town in Sulu and the foreigner Rex Triplett in Sirawai town in Zamboanga-Sibugay in one attack after another from between 2017 to late 2019.

The joint operation of the Sulu provincial police and WestMinCom’s anti-terror Joint Task Force Sulu that resulted in the death of the four Abu Sayyaf members was premised on tips from residents who noticed their presence in one of the houses in Barangay Alat in Jolo.

Jolo is the capital town of Sulu, a component province of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao.