Two Indonesian hostages walk free in Philippines: army

JOLO: Two Indonesian sailors kidnapped by Islamist militants off the southern Philippines walked free on Thursday after a firefight that left five kidnappers dead, the military said.

The sailors were abducted nine months ago in Malaysian waters and taken to the remote southern Philippine island of Jolo, a stronghold of the suspects from the Abu Sayyaf group, Islamist militants engaged mainly in kidnappings for ransom. Their ordeal ended when they turned up at a military checkpoint on Jolo shortly after Philippine troops clashed with their suspected kidnappers in a nearby town, the local military chief said.

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"Our soldiers spotted them at a checkpoint where they were on board a public utility vehicle," Brigadier General Cirilito Sobejana, task force commander for the region, told AFP.

"It appears they were able to flee their captors after the encounter that occurred 30 minutes prior to that," he said, adding all were unharmed but showing the effects of poor nutrition.

Five Abu Sayyaf members were killed and five soldiers were wounded in that firefight, he added. The two were abducted in November off the Malaysian state of Sabah that had for years suffered from repeated kidnappings by the Abu Sayyaf.

The kidnappers still hold 15 other hostages, all but two of them foreigners, the general said. One Vietnamese sailor was rescued last month after nine months in captivity.

The Abu Sayyaf is known to behead its hostages unless ransom payments are made, but Sobejana said he was unaware of any ransom being paid for the two Indonesians. Elderly German yachtsman Jurgen Kantner, was beheaded in February after the kidnappers' demand for 30 million pesos ($600,000) was not met.

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The kidnappers had also murdered his woman partner and compatriot during his kidnapping at sea four months earlier. Last year, the group beheaded two Canadian hostages. Abu Sayyaf, originally a loose network of militants formed in the 1990s with seed money from Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network, has splintered into factions, with some continuing to engage in banditry and kidnappings.

One faction has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group, and joined militants battling security forces since May in the southern city of Marawi, the largely Catholic nation's most important population centre. The militants continue to occupy parts of the southern city despite a US-backed military offensive there that has claimed nearly 800 lives and displaced nearly 400,000 people.