10 Islamist Militants Killed During Gunfight in Philippine
Last update: April 17, 2026
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Militants reportedly killed during gunfight after resisting arrest..
Philippine security forces killed 10 alleged armed Islamist militants who resisted an attempt to arrest them, police said on Friday.
The firefight with police and soldiers happened in the Muslim-populated south of the mainly Catholic Asian nation, where remnants of Islamic State-inspired groups operate.
The police said among the dead was Amerol Mangoranca, leader of an armed group called the Maute-Dawlah Islamiya.
It added that the government force arrived near the town of Marantao before dawn to serve arrest warrants for murder, homicide, and kidnapping against Mangoranca and his group but that triggered an hour-long firefight with the group, who included the rebel leader's wife and three other women.
A separate military report said an unharmed infant was recovered after the gunfight.
The military said Government forces sustained no casualties and recovered guns and explosives.
The slain gunmen were from the "same network responsible for the Marawi siege and years of violence", the military unit's commander Major-General Yegor Barroquillo said in the statement.
In May 2017, hundreds of Filipino Muslim fighters as well as foreign militants joined forces to take over the Mindanao city of Marawi, intending to make it the capital of a Southeast Asian caliphate to be ruled by their radical interpretation of Islam.
A bloody siege by government forces ended five months later with the loss of more than a thousand lives and with many of the militant groups' most senior leaders being killed.
