“We have cordoned the area so we are very optimistic that we will recover the remaining Indonesian,” Sobejana told reporters. Military offensives against militants, such as the Abu Sayyaf, have reduced abductions in the past few years, but they continue to occur. Abu Sayyaf militants have staged kidnappings in and off Sabah in the past few years, sparking a regional security alarm. Troops have killed a “high-value,” but little-known Abu Sayyaf commander, Talha Jumsah, near Sulu’s mountainous Patikul town. The Abu Sayyaf emerged in the late 1980s as an offshoot of the decades-long Muslim separatist insurgency in the south of the largely Roman Catholic nation.

Source: Taipei Times December 22, 2019 15:56 UTC