Gunmen kidnapped a wealthy businessman and his daughter then warned the military to pull back after troops managed to get near their hide-out in the southern Philippines, officials said Thursday.
The late Wednesday kidnappings in Cotabato City were the latest in a rash of abductions that has sparked a new government crackdown in the country's volatile south. Cotabato lies outside three southern provinces where several kidnappings have been staged in a sign that abductions may be spreading, an official said.
William Tan, a Filipino of Chinese descent whose family owns a chain of businesses including a hotel and a commercial store, was about to enter his residence in a car with his wife and two daughters when four heavily armed men approached, police said. The men shattered the vehicle's glass windows with their rifles and then dragged Tan out.
Tan's wife tried to fight back but was hit in the head with a pistol. The kidnappers then fled in a van with Tan and one of his two daughters toward a coastal area. They set the van on fire then transferred to two waiting motor boats, Cotabato city police chief Willie Dangane said.
Investigators have not identified the kidnappers but suspect they were members of the 11,600-strong rebel group Moro Islamic Liberation Front, which has been targeted by a monthslong military offensive in nearby Maguindanao province, Dangane told reporters.
Cotabato Mayor Muslimin Sema said the kidnappers allowed Tan to call his family to warn the military to stop a planned rescue, apparently sensing that government troops managed to locate their hide-out. Air force helicopters hovered in the area Wednesday.
Kidnappings for ransom, fed on huge numbers of unlicensed firearms and poverty, have eased in Cotabato city and nearby townships in the 1990s. Tan's kidnapping may have been inspired by a wave of kidnappings in the southern islands of Jolo and Basilan and the nearby Zamboanga Peninsula, Sema said.
President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has ordered the military and police to launch a new crackdown after expressing alarm over a series of kidnappings in the south by suspected members of the al-Qaida-linked Abu Sayyaf group and its allied gunmen.
The Abu Sayyaf is on a U.S. blacklist of terrorist organizations for its links to al-Qaida and involvement in kidnappings, bombings and beheadings.
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