Armed rebels kidnap three factory workers in Philippines

Manila: Three factory workers were abducted from a plywood manufacturing firm in the southern Philippines yesterday, a day after kidnappers decapitated a school principal whom they had abducted last October, a radio report said.

Armed men in military attire barged into Hitech Wood Craft Corporation in Maluso town on Basilan island and abducted Michael Tan, 27, Oscar Lu, 51, and Mark Singson, at noon yesterday, Basilan police chief Senior Superintendent Abu Bakr Tulawi said.

The abductors took their victims to Basilan's forested area on foot. Tulawi said police had launched a massive rescue operation and are bent on bringing the kidnappers to account.

Vice Governor Al Rasheed Sakalahul said: "Money could be the motive for this."

No group has yet claimed responsibility for the kidnapping. However, the 400-strong Abu Sayyaf, a terrorist group, is known to operate on Basilan island.

Meanwhile, shocked residents on Monday found the decapitated head of school principal, Gabriel Canizares, near a gas station on Sulu island, a province near Basilan.

On the same day, President Gloria Arroyo created a joint military police task force whose commission is to hunt down the kidnappers of the slain Canizares.

The Philippine National Police said charges will be filed against suspected Canizare's kidnappers from Abu Sayyaf. However, the names of the suspects were not released.

The Abu Sayyaf Group has active links with Jemaah Islamiyah, the Southeast Asian conduit of the Al Qaida terror network.

Last month, armed men abducted Irish priest Michael Sinnott in Pagadian, also in the south.

Accusation

Authorities claimed that a commander of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), a group which has been engaged in peace talks with the Philippine government since 1997, is holding Sinnott at the boundary of Lanao del Norte and Lanao del Sur provinces in the south.

The MILF denied the allegations, adding the commander has been in charge of efforts to rescue Sinnott. The Philippine government and the MILF had forged an earlier agreement to jointly flush terrorists out of Mindanao.