Philippine troops raided a major camp of anti-government militant groups in the South, seizing a number of bomb-making facilities, the military said Wednesday.
Brigadier General Juancho Sabban, chief of the Armed Forces' counter-terrorism unit Task Force Comet, said the overnight assault in the jungles of Jolo Island had "pre-empted" possible strikes by the extremists.
Sabban said some 200 suspected members of the Abu Sayyaf group and Indonesia-based Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) were in the camp when troops launched the "surgical attack" late Tuesday night under the cover of darkness.
Sabban said over 300 government troops used heavy artillery and mortar fire, causing "heavy losses" on the bandit's side.
One soldier from the government side was injured.
Top leader of the Abu Sayyaf Radulan Sahiron and JI bomb expert Umar Patek, a suspect in the 2002 Bali bombings, were said to be present in the camp.
The Abu Sayyaf is a small extremist group based in southern Philippine region of Mindanao. The 340-member group, suspected of maintaining close ties with Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network, was blamed for a series of terrorist attacks including a 2004 ferry blast that killed more than 100.
JI, the Islamic militant group which has been blamed for deadly bomb attacks in Indonesia, have its members being trained in camps with Abu Sayyaf rebels on Jolo, security observers said.
Two of JI's top bomb experts, Dulmatin and Umar Patek, are believed to be somewhere in the south of the Philippines.
Source:Xinhua
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