Malaysian Police Kill Three Suspected Filipino Gunmen in Sabah Area Waters

In the first violent encounter between Malaysian security personnel and suspected cross-border kidnappers from the southern Philippines, police killed three gunmen and captured two others during a shootout off eastern Malaysia’s Sabah state, officials said Friday.

The incident occurred late Thursday after seven suspected Filipino gunmen in a boat attacked three vessels in the area around Semporna, a town on Sabah’s east coast close to the southern Philippines.

Kidnappings of sailors by suspected Abu Sayyaf Group militants this year have occurred in the seas that separate the Philippines from Malaysian and Indonesian Borneo.

Security forces were searching Friday for the two remaining suspects and the skipper of one of the ships who was taken hostage, according to a police incident report obtained by BenarNews and local media accounts of a Friday press conference by Sabah Police Commissioner Abdul Rashid Harun.

The captain of one of the other trawlers was rescued, but a policeman was shot in the foot during the gun battle, authorities said.

The shootout erupted as the gunmen in a speedboat approached a Tiger Platoon vessel patrolling local waters, Abdul Rashid told reporters, adding the suspects mistook it for another trawler they planned to hijack. The Tiger Platoon is a unit with the Malaysian police’s elite General Operations Force.

The platoon commander noticed that the men on the speedboat were heavily armed, he said.

“The head then shouted ‘police’ and the abductors started to open fire. The security forces personnel returned fire in defense and a shootout ensued for one minute,” Abdul Rashid said, noting that the gunmen’s boat began to sink afterward.

When the shooting died down, the police found the bodies of three gunmen floating in the water. Two other gunmen and the skipper were found alive.

Full story: BenarNews

Desmond Davidson
Kuching, Malaysia