Word: cotabato
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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There was nothing furtive about the dozen or so men who checked into the Sardonyx Plaza hotel in the city of Cotabato on the southern Philippine island of Mindanao on Oct. 1. Their leader, a small, cherubic-looking young man who signed the register as Eric Yacub, said more men would be joining them the next day. The group then ate a hearty dinner, ordering food "like there was no tomorrow," recalls hotel employee Marietta Sandayen. As it transpired, there wouldn't be much of a tomorrow for Yacub?at least, not the kind of day he was expecting. Around...
...DIED. FATHUR ROHMAN AL-GHOZI, 32, Indonesian militant and fugitive bombmaker shot dead by police; in Pigkawayan, Cotabato, the Philippines. Al-Ghozi, a member of the Southeast Asian militant Islamic group Jemaah Islamiah, had been on the run since July, after escaping from a Philippine maximum-security prison while serving a 10-year jail term for explosives possession. He was also a suspect in the December 2000 bombing of a Manila train station in which 22 people died. Philippine police said al-Ghozi was killed in a shootout. Authorities denied allegations from leftist militants and some politicians that the fugitive...
...more peace talks were to be held in Kuala Lumpur. Feeling betrayed, the MILF's frail 61-year-old spiritual leader, cleric Hashim Salamat, made an emotional appeal for all Muslims with access to arms to "fight until death." In a taped speech broadcast on Feb. 24 by a Cotabato regional radio station, he said, "We are pushed to the wall, we have to fight back...
...fact, ratcheted up his jihad campaign even before that broadcast, directing the MILF's Special Operations Group (SOG) to launch retaliatory strikes in urban areas of Mindanao. The SOG attacked military targets and power transmission towers, plunging 90% of Mindanao into darkness with one explosion in late February. Cotabato City airport was bombed, too, killing one person and injuring six. Then came the attack in Davao, which the authorities are also attributing to the MILF. They claim Sudang, the suspected suicide bomber, was an MILF member, and Mayor Duterte says Sudang's name appears in MILF documents seized...
...Mohammad Jamal Khalifa, brother-in-law and Philippines point man of Osama bin Laden. A veteran of the Afghan jihad, Khalifa is believed to have first visited the southern Philippines in 1988, setting up Islamic charities and a rattan business while recruiting Muslim youth to fight in Afghanistan. In Cotabato, his Islamic Relief Organization (IRO) opened offices in town opposite the bishop's residence. Embarrassingly for the MILF?which has angrily denied links with international terror?Khalifa's associate Selamah had been in regular touch with the Front. Reports from local sources, including some MILF commanders, point to the Palestinian...