A deployment of naval gunboat armed with surface-to-surface missiles are being used by the Philippine government for its all-out offensive against the Abu Sayyaf terrorists hiding in the jungles of Sulu and Basilan. This was according to the Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana.
In a media interview on Wednesday, Lorenzana said the surface-to-surface missiles are the latest weapons acquired by the Philippine Navy (PN) as the modernization of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) which is long overdue.
“We will buy more for our soldiers,” Lorenzana said.
Since Monday, Colonel Cirilito Sobejana, the Army commander of the Joint Task Force Sulu, has mounted a yielding offensive against the Abu Sayyaf in the island of Sulu taking after the decapitation of Jurgen Gustav Kantner, a German national hostage by the Abu Sayyaf since November last year.
Col. Sobejana who received a medal of valor for his bravery in combat, has ordered a ground and air assaults on Abu Sayyaf dens in the wildernesses of Sulu without interval.
Lorenzana said It shows the determination of President Rodrigo Duterte to crush once and for all the Abu Sayyaf with the used of naval gunboats equipped with surface-to-surface missiles.
He denounced the Abu Sayyaf for executing Kantner, who had not committed a wrongdoing against the terrorist group, adding that decapitation is brutal.
AFP troops pursuing the terrorists are equipped with high-powered firearms and night-vision goggles, so Lorenzana expects the task force to pulverize and eliminate the 300 Abu Sayyaf in a year. - JCE.
