Philippine military kills nine Islamic terrorists, including two involved in recent Catholic Mass bombing

he Philippines’ armed forces eliminated nine Islamic terrorists, including two involved in last month’s bombing of a Catholic mass in southern city of Marawi. On December 3, four worshipers were killed and over 50 were injured after a bomb went off at a Catholic service being held inside a university campus.

The terrorists killed by the military belonged to Daulah Islamiyah, a Philippines-based terrorist group affiliated to the Islamic State. The Philippines, despite being overwhelmingly Catholic, suffers from Islamic terrorism in its Muslim-dominated southern region. Islamic terror groups such as the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) and Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) have been waging jihad warfare against country’s peaceful Christian population.

Marawi city, where the last month’s bombing took place, witnessed a deadly siege in 2017 by Islamic terrorists, which took around 1,000 innocent lives. “The Marawi siege was carried out by the Islamic State-linked Maute group, a pro-Islamic State faction of the Abu Sayyaf group and other smaller Islamic State-linked groups,” the Japanese newspaper Nikkei noted December 5. “The fighting killed some 1,000 people and was Islamic State’s most serious push to gain a foothold in Southeast Asia, unsettling governments across the region.”

“Philippine troops kill nine Islamist militants,” Reuters, January 27, 2024:

Government troops killed nine members of a pro-Islamic State group in the southern Philippines, the military said on Saturday, including two suspects in a deadly blast at a Catholic Mass last month.

Four soldiers were wounded during Thursday and Friday’s counter terrorism operation in the Lanao del Sur province, the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) said in a statement, but all are in stable condition.

Those killed were members of Daulah Islamiyah, the AFP said, a pro-Islamic State militant group that took control of the southern Marawi city in 2017 and held it through five months of ground offensives and air strikes by the military.

Among those killed were the two named suspects in the Dec. 3 bombing in a university gymnasium in Marawi that killed at least four people and injured 50 others.