Alleged terror group member killed in Sarangani raid

From the Philippine News Agency (May 5): Alleged terror group member killed in Sarangani raid

A suspected member of an armed group sympathetic with the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) was killed in a police operation in Kiamba town in Sarangani province, a belated report reaching here Friday said.

Sr. Insp. Ruben Lambago, deputy chief of the Kiamba municipal police station, said that suspect Jukarno Espadilla was gunned down Wednesday by joint operatives after resisting arrest during a raid at his home in Barangay Badtasan, Kiamba.

He said the operation was joined by elements from Sarangani police’s drug enforcement unit, provincial intelligence branch, regional police public safety battalion and the Kiamba municipal police station.

Armed with a search warrant, he said the raiding team swooped down on the suspect’s house and another target, Basir Saha, at around 3:30 a.m.

After the warrant was served, the police official said Espadilla run inside his house, took a grenade and attempted to hurl it towards the operatives.

Lambago said the team was forced to shoot the suspect in the process while Saha managed to escape.

The suspect was rushed to a local hospital but was declared dead upon arrival by the physicians, he said.

Recovered from Espadilla’s house were suspected bomb-making materials, a fragmentation grenade and several sachets of suspected methamphetamine hydrochloride or shabu.

The operatives also seized a motorcycle that was supposedly used by slain terror group leader Mohammad Jaafar Sabewang Maguid alias Tokboy.

Maguid, the founder and leader of the Ansar Al-Khilafah Philippines (AKP), was killed in an encounter at past midnight on Jan. 5 at Angel Beach Resort in Barangay Kitagas, Kiamba.

AKP, which pledged support to the ISIS, had been blamed over a string of terror attacks in Sarangani and the neighboring areas these past years.

http://www.pna.gov.ph/index.php/articles/985247