10 militants killed as Philippine forces foil arrest operation

Security forces in the Philippines have killed 10 suspected Islamist militants after they reportedly resisted arrest during an operation on Friday, according to police authorities.

The deadly confrontation occurred in the country’s Muslim-majority southern region, an area that has long experienced unrest and where remnants of groups linked to Islamic State continue to operate.

Police confirmed that one of those killed was Amerol Mangoranca, identified as the leader of the Maute-Dawlah Islamiya group.

Authorities said the militants opened fire when security operatives moved in to apprehend them, triggering a fierce gun battle involving both police and military personnel.

The government force arrived near the town of Marantao before dawn to serve arrest warrants for murder, homicide, and kidnapping against Mangoranca and his group, it said.

This triggered an hour-long firefight with the group, which included the rebel leader’s wife and three other women.

A separate military report said an unharmed infant was recovered after the gunfight.

Government forces sustained no casualties and recovered guns and explosives, the military added.

The group is suspected of being behind a January attack that killed four soldiers and wounded another, said the Philippine Army’s First Infantry Division report.

The slain gunmen were from the “same network responsible for the Marawi siege and years of violence”, the military unit’s commander, Major-General Yegor Barroquillo, said in the statement.

In May 2017, hundreds of Filipino Muslim fighters, as well as foreign militants, joined forces to take over the Mindanao city of Marawi, intending to make it the capital of a Southeast Asian caliphate to be ruled by their radical interpretation of Islam.

A bloody siege by government forces ended five months later with the loss of more than a thousand lives and with many of the militant groups’ most senior leaders being killed.

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