ZAMBOANGA CITY/DAVAO CITY, 26 May —Bandits on speedboats seized a passenger boat and abducted 40 people in the Mindanao Sea, taking them to a remote southern island, officials said yesterday.
The incident occurred Thursday afternoon but was not immediately reported because the captured boat, like most of the transport plying the tiny islands in the area, had no radio or navigation equipment.
Most, if not all, of the hostages were believed to be Filipinos, but no details were available.
A report from Basilan provincial police said the hostages had been traveling from Maluso, in island province of Basilan, to nearby Babuan Island when gunmen in speedboats intercepted them.
The report said the kidnappers were believed to be from the Abu Sayyaf, a guerrilla group that grew to notoriety last year by seizing dozens of foreign tourists.
The Abu Sayyaf took their latest hostages to Sulu province, a collection of islands 1,000 kilometers south of Manila, and the military sent soldiers in pursuit, said Charlemagne Batayola, a spokesman for the army’s Southern Command
“The victims were taken by the gunmen to Tapiantana Island,” he said.
On Tuesday, dozens of gunmen, armed with assault rifles and rocket launchers, tried to storm the Samal Island tourist resort in the Davao region. Security guards fought them off but two resort workers were killed and three security guards were injured in the fighting.
Pearl Farm attack
The Abu Sayyaf yesterday claimed responsibility for the attack. In an interview over Radyo Ukay-Zamboanga, Abu Sayyaf spokesman Abu Sabaya said the attack was partly to demonstrate that the group was far from neutralized, as the military and police had been saying.
Sabaya said they had no intention of harming their four remaining hostages but will be using them as guides.
But security officials, who earlier blamed the Abu Sayyaf for the attack, said it appeared that pirates were responsible and that the extremist group was just riding on the issue.
Police said yesterday they were still debriefing one of the four hostages who had escaped from their captors.
Dante Alimama, 19, stole away from the raiders’ encampment, a police spokesmen from the regional police headquarters in this southern city said.
At least 10 gunmen crept up to the resort on Samal Island off Davao on Tuesday night and destroyed its wharf with a hail of rocket-fired grenades and gunfire.
Two hotel staff were killed and three others wounded but none of the 105 hotel guests were harmed.
Police said Alimama and three other people were taken captive while the gunmen passed through a fishing village near the town of Malita, south of Davao, on Wednesday.
