Girl, 7, rescued from Sayyaf in Sulu

ZAMBOANGA CITY — A joint police-military group rescued a seven-year-old girl held captive by suspected Abu Sayyaf men in Panglima Estino, Sulu before dawn yesterday, authorities said.

The victim, Rachel Ann Gojit, held captive since last Feb. 19, was recovered by Talipao policemen and elements of the Army’s 35th Infantry Battalion in Sitio Bulongan Cuppan in Barangay Jinggan, said Lt. Gen. Roy Kyamko, chief of the Armed Forces’ Southern Command.

Gojit, daughter of a retiring soldier, was seized while a pedicab driver was dropping her off in school in Jolo. Her kidnappers shot the driver dead when he resisted.

Kyamko said the captors, led by one Al-Kimer Askad alias Jurdan, hastily fled as the police-military team cordoned off their lair and abandoned the child.

Meanwhile, the military has created a task force to hunt down a band of Abu Sayyaf gunmen reportedly holding out in the hinterlands of Palimbang, Sultan Kudarat and blamed for the recent spate of bombings in the South Cotabato-Sarangani-General Santos City (Socsargen) area.

The Mindanao Cross, a weekly newspaper of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate congregation, quoted Brig. Gen. Alexander Yano, commander of the Army’s 601st Infantry Brigade, as saying that the newly created, military-led Task Force Palimbang would go after heavily armed, seafaring Abu Sayyaf members who landed at a coastal village in Palimbang last year.

Yano said the armed men have been moving from one forested area to another in Palimbang, home to mixed Maguindanaon, Tausog, Tiruray and Christian settlers.

The Abu Sayyaf members, according to Yano, have joined ranks with the Abu Sofia, a local kidnap-for-ransom gang holding out at the boundary of Sultan Kudarat and Maguindanao.

The Abu Sofia is composed of rogue Moro rebels, who are wanted for various criminal offenses.

Soldiers running after the Tausog-speaking Abu Sayyaf men, said to have come from the Zamboanga peninsula, earlier had arrested four suspected members of the group, two of them found possessing a list of wealthy traders in Central Mindanao and their respective addresses. — Roel Pareño, John Unson