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The death toll from clashes between government forces and Abu Sayyaf bandits who launched a counterattack to regain control of a jungle training camp in Sulu has risen to 26, the military said yesterday.
Western Mindanao Command spokesperson Capt. Maria Rowena Muyuela said the latest field reports showed 25 Abu Sayyaf militants were killed and 24 of them wounded. On the government side, one Marine trooper died and 19 were wounded.
Authorities in India’s remote northeast called in the army to restore order and imposed an indefinite curfew after recovering seven more bodies Saturday that brought to 29 the number of Muslim villagers killed by separatist rebels in the worst outbreak of violence in the region in two years.
Army troops marched through the troubled areas of Assam state in a show of force after police said gunmen from the Bodo tribe, which has long accused Muslims of sneaking into India illegally from neighboring Bangladesh, went on a shooting rampage, setting ablaze Muslim homes and firing indiscriminately on civilians.
An Indian official says two army soldiers and two suspected rebels have been killed in a fierce gunbattle in Indian-controlled Kashmir.
Paramilitary officer Nalin Prabhat says the fighting began late Friday after Indian troops and police surrounded Karewa Malino village in southern Kashmir and launched a search for suspected militants there.
Kachin refugees are seen in a tent at a rescue camp in the Chinese southwestern border city of Ruili, Yunnan province early this year. (Photo: Reuters)
The Burmese government has blamed troops from the Kachin Independence Army (KIA) for an escalation of hostilities that has displaced thousands of civilians this month in Kachin State, amid claims by rebel leaders that government forces have repeatedly been the first to attack.
Ye Htut, the presidential spokesman in Naypyidaw, accused the KIA of violating a ceasefire agreement during the recent surge in fighting, which has left 22 soldiers dead and 5,000 people displaced.
The banned terror outfit, Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) announced on Wednesday its decision of not extending the ceasefire, saying the government had failed to respond positively to the militant organisation’s ceasefire of more than 40 days.
In a statement, TTP spokesman Shahidullah Shaihid said that the Taliban Shura had decided not to extend the ceasefire because more than 50 of their activists were killed in custody during the past 40 days. He claimed that the government had failed to meet even the “justifiable demands” of the militants.