Abu Sayyaf and the War on Terrorism

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In the early morning hours of 27 May, a party of Abu Sayyaf gunmen raided the Dos Palmas beach resort located off Palawan Island, not far from the provincial capital of Puerto Princesa, and seized twenty resort guests and staff. The guests included three Americans: a Christian missionary couple working in the Philippines, and originally from Kansas, and Guillermo Sobrero, a naturalized American originally from Argentina and residing in California. The May 2001 raid was reminiscent of the attack in 2000 on a resort in Malaysia in which the Muslim group captured a number of European tourists. However, considering the distance of the Muslim southern islands from Palawan, the May 2001 attack …