A Philippine flag covers each of the 15 caskets of the fallen soldiers.
It was a sad day at the Edwards Andrews Airbase in Zamboanga City on Tuesday as over a dozen caskets were brought down from a C-130 plane from Jolo, Sulu in the afternoon.
The flag-draped caskets contained the bodies of the 15 members of the 35th Infantry Division who were killed in clashes with the Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG).
Security was tight as the base was on red alert — even the media members were not allowed inside the premises.
But amid the mourning, relatives of one of the fallen soldiers can take solace in the fact that none of the troopers was mutilated or decapitated as previously reported by other media groups.
This was according to Western Mindanao Command (Wesmincom) spokesman Maj. Filemon Tan Jr.
Video: Families of killed soldiers mourn
The beheading story came about when earlier in the day, messages were sent from the phone of one of the slain soldiers, Pfc. Jison Falcasantos.
The message read, "Your son is dead, we have decapitated him."
Apparently, the messages were sent by an alleged member of the bandit group.
"Beheading not true... There was no decapitation among our soldiers," Tan said in Filipino.
Wesmincom spokesman Maj. Filemon Tan Jr.
Tan also said the series of fighting, which started last Friday, would most likely continue in the following days. He said the clashes were just the beginning, "the tip of the iceberg."
"There will be more troops, more equipment, more firepower," he said.
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Meanwhile, the remains of the soldiers were set to be brought at the St. Peter's funeral parlor were they will lie in state.
The military is set to give honors to the fallen soldiers at Wesmincom headquarters, tentatively the next day.
Most of the slain soldiers were from Lanao del Norte and the Zamboanga Peninsula.
http://cnnphilippines.com/regional/2016/08/30/No-beheading-Abu-Sayyaf-Wesmincom-AFP.html
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