MANILA: President Rodrigo Duterte traveled Thursday to the main battle zone in southern Marawi after Philippine troops finally recaptured a main mosque where Daesh-linked militants had taken cover with their hostages in the three-month siege of the city, the military said.
Clad in a combat uniform, protective vest and helmet, Duterte congratulated the troops for regaining control of the Islamic Center, an indication they are nearing the final stage in ending the disastrous uprising. It was Duterte’s third known trip to the embattled city.
During his brief visit, Duterte inspected a devastated community near the frontline and talked to troops guarding a recaptured building. He also visited a military patrol base and “tried a sniper rifle and fired twice toward the direction of the terrorists,” a government statement said.
Army Col. Romeo Brawner said Duterte went to the main battle area, a cluster of dense, mosque-dotted communities which has been heavily damaged in the fighting, with military chief Gen. Eduardo Ano and top commanders.
More than 760 people, including 595 militants, have died in the Marawi fighting, which has sparked concerns that the Daesh group may have taken a foothold in Southeast Asia through local extremists as it suffers battle setbacks in Syria and Iraq.
About 600 gunmen launched the insurrection in Marawi’s commercial center on May 23 after a botched army raid to capture the group’s leader, Isnilon Hapilon, according to the military.
The United States and Australia have deployed surveillance aircraft to help Filipino troops locate the hundreds of militants who took positions in buildings, mosques and houses, some of them linked by underground tunnels. China provided heavy weaponry and Southeast Asian governments offered aid for troops and the hundreds of thousands of displaced residents.
It was not immediately clear if any militants or their hostages were in the mosque when troops entered the building Thursday after weeks of painstakingly slow advances because of sniper fire and an order from Duterte to avoid any massive attack that might harm an estimated several dozen hostages, including a Roman Catholic priest, used by the gunmen as human shields.
Brawner said the militants withdrew shortly before troops gained access to the mosque in fighting that wounded three soldiers. He said the gunmen had rigged the building with booby-traps and explosives which were being cleared by the troops.
“We recovered the mosque after some resistance but not through an assault with bombardment because we wanted to preserve the structure,” Brawner said.
The military says about 40 gunmen are still fighting in the main battle zone, now confined to a smaller cluster of communities after troops backed by airstrikes and artillery fire recaptured key bridges and crossed over a river toward the main militant position.
Some residents have started to return to neighborhoods declared safe by the military. Classes at the main Mindanao State University reopened Tuesday, although a clash between government forces and gunmen allied with the militants in nearby Marantao town, outside the city, underscored the remaining danger.
Duterte declared martial law in the largely Roman Catholic archipelago’s southern third until the end of the year to deal with the Marawi crisis and prevent other armed groups from reinforcing the militants or launching similar uprisings elsewhere in the volatile region.
Filipino troops recapture mosque, Duterte revisits Marawi
Filipino troops recapture mosque, Duterte revisits Marawi
Power outages hit Ukraine and Moldova as Kyiv struggles against the winter cold
- Outages had been caused by a technical malfunction affecting power lines linking Ukraine and Moldova
- Blackouts were reported in Kyiv, as well as Zhytomyr and Kharkiv regions
KYIV: Emergency power cuts swept across several Ukrainian cities as well as neighboring Moldova on Saturday, officials said, amid a commitment from the Kremlin to US President Donald Trump to pause strikes on Kyiv as Ukraine battles one of its bleakest winters in years.
Ukraine’s Energy Minister Denys Shmyhal said that the outages had been caused by a technical malfunction affecting power lines linking Ukraine and Moldova.
The failure “caused a cascading outage in Ukraine’s power grid,” triggering automatic protection systems, he said.
Blackouts were reported in Kyiv, as well as Zhytomyr and Kharkiv regions, in the center and northeast of the country respectively. The outage cut water supplies to the Ukrainian capital, officials said, while the city’s subway system was temporarily suspended because of low voltage on the network.
Moldova also experienced major power outages, including in the capital Chisinau, officials said.
“Due to the loss of power lines on the territory of Ukraine, the automatic protection system was triggered, which disconnected the electricity supply,” Moldova’s Energy Minister Dorin Junghietu said in a post on Facebook. “I encourage the population to stay calm until electricity is restored.”
Weaponizing winter
The large-scale outage followed weeks of Russian strikes against Ukraine’s already struggling energy grid, which have triggered long stretches of severe power shortages.
Moscow has sought to deny Ukrainian civilians heat, light and running water over the course of the war, in a strategy that Ukrainian officials describe as “weaponizing winter.”
While Russia has used similar tactics throughout the course of its almost four-year invasion of Ukraine, temperatures throughout this winter have fallen further than usual, bringing widespread hardship to civilians.
Forecasters say Ukraine will experience a brutally cold period stretching into next week. Temperatures in some areas will drop to minus 30 degrees Celsius (minus 22 Fahrenheit), Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said.
Trump said late Thursday that President Vladimir Putin had agreed to a temporary pause in targeting Kyiv and other Ukrainian towns amid the extreme weather.
“I personally asked President Putin not to fire on Kyiv and the cities and towns for a week during this ... extraordinary cold,” Trump said during a Cabinet meeting at the White House. Putin has “agreed to that,” he said, without elaborating on when the request to the Russian leader was made.
The White House didn’t immediately respond to a query seeking clarity about the scope and timing of any limited pause.
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov confirmed Friday that Trump “made a personal request” to Putin to stop targeting Kyiv until Sunday “in order to create favorable conditions for negotiations.”
Talks are expected to take place between US, Russian and Ukrainian officials on Feb. 1 in Abu Dhabi. The teams previously met in late January in the first known time that officials from the Trump administration simultaneously met with negotiators from both Ukraine and Russia. However, it’s unclear many obstacles to peace remain. Disagreement over what happens to occupied Ukrainian territory, and Moscow’s demand for possession of territory it hasn’t captured, are a key issue holding up a peace deal, Zelensky said Thursday.
Russian presidential envoy Kirill Dmitriev said on social media Saturday that he was in Miami, where talks between Russian and US negotiators have previously taken place.
Russia struck Ukrainian energy assets in several regions on Thursday but there were no strikes on those facilities overnight, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said Friday.
In a post on social media, Zelensky also noted that Russia has turned its attention to targeting Ukrainian logistics networks, and that Russian drones and missiles hit residential areas of Ukraine overnight, as they have most nights during the war.
Trump has framed Putin’s acceptance of the pause in strikes as a concession. But Zelensky was skeptical as Russia’s invasion approaches its fourth anniversary on Feb. 24 with no sign that Moscow is willing to reach a peace settlement despite a US-led push to end the fighting.
“I do not believe that Russia wants to end the war. There is a great deal of evidence to the contrary,” Zelensky said Thursday.
