Twenty years after obtaining Christian educations, Muslim brothers Omarkhayam and Abdullah Maute returned to their southern Philippine city with the black flags of the Islamic State group and set fire to their alma mater. Hundreds of gunmen, many of them young locals recruited by the Maute brothers, destroyed Dansalan College in a rampage across Marawi City last month as they launched a brutal offensive to stamp their credentials as Philippine leaders of IS. IS named Hapilon as its leader in the Philippines in recent years, and he is believed to be in Marawi with the Maute brothers. However Jones, director of the Jakarta-based Institute for Policy Analysis of Conflict, said leadership had effectively shifted to the Maute brothers because they were controlling events in Marawi. Suddenly, the bigger threat (is) foreign fighters who never set foot in the Middle East going to Mindanao,” Jones said.

Source: Philippine Daily Inquirer June 18, 2017 07:30 UTC