Malaysian police kill 5 suspected members of Abu Sayyaf

Police in Malaysia’s east on Tuesday said they shot dead five men suspected to be members of the Philippines-based Abu Sayyaf Islamist terrorist group during a raid.

Police in Sabah, a state in the Malaysian part of the Island of Borneo, said that the five were killed during a patrol at the same location where police earlier arrested eight alleged members of the group.

The group has its stronghold across the Sulu Sea in the southern Philippines.

“Our men knocked on the door of one of the squatter houses but were met with hostile gunfire, which we immediately returned,’’ said Sabah Police Commissioner, Hazani Ghazali,during a news conference in Kota Kinabalu, the Sabah regional capital.

Known for its brutal and sometimes deadly kidnappings, some of which have been carried out during raids on Sabah, Abu Sayyaf has declared loyalty to the Islamic State.

It has been deemed a terrorist organisation by the United States and the Philippines, where soldiers in March killed a key leader during a raid to free Indonesian hostages.

Abu Sayyaf is one of several armed groups operating in the southern Philippines, where Islamic militants have fought against the Catholic-dominated central government in Manila for decades.

The group has also in the past asserted a territorial claim to Malaysia’s Sabah.