Manila: Islamist gunmen killed nine people and injured ten others as they attacked a town in the Philippines at dawn on Monday, burning houses in which women and children were sleeping, police said.
About 60 members of the notorious Abu Sayyaf kidnap-for- ransom group entered a town in their stronghold on Basilan island in the southern Mindanao region and began shooting, local police chief John Cundo told AFP.
"This is an act of terrorism and cowardice. When our forces engaged them in a 45-minute firefight and they felt our numbers and volume of fire they backed away and fled," Cundo said.
"What is unfortunate is that women and children were affected as they were still sleeping when this happened."
The militants burned four houses and a day care centre in the town of Maluso, Cundo said, adding police and the military were conducting "hot pursuit" operations against the gunmen. The Abu Sayyaf is a loose network of militants formed in the 1990s with seed money from Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network. Its members have engaged in banditry and kidnapping, targeting foreigners in exchange for millions of dollars.