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Philippine troops hunt for Malaysian militant tipped to be next IS regional leader

MARAWI — Philippine troops on Tuesday (Oct 17) stepped up its hunt for a Malaysian militant tipped to take over as the head of the Islamic State group in Southeast Asia, after the killing of the organisation’s former leader.

Mahmud Ahmad, in an image taken from an undated video released by the Philippines military, is tipped to be the IS leader for South-east Asia

Mahmud Ahmad, in an image taken from an undated video released by the Philippines military, is tipped to be the IS leader for South-east Asia

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MARAWI — Philippine troops on Tuesday (Oct 17) stepped up its hunt for a Malaysian militant tipped to take over as the head of the Islamic State group in Southeast Asia, after the killing of the organisation’s former leader.

Mahmud Ahmad is the top remaining target for Philippine forces battling to end the nearly five-month siege of Marawi that has claimed more than 1,000 lives and left the Muslim-majority city in ruins.

The military claimed a major breakthrough Monday when it announced the death of Isnilon Hapilon, said by President Rodrigo Duterte and security analysts to be a key figure in the IS push to establish a Southeast Asian caliphate as they suffer battlefield defeats in Iraq and Syria.

“Mahmud remains... one of our high-value targets in the operations being conducted,” military spokesman Major-General Restituto Padilla said on Tuesday.

He added troops were fighting in a zone comprising about 60 to 80 buildings in the ruined city.

“We are focused on a ground offensive because the fighting is too close.”

Gen Padilla said Mahmud Ahmad was among 20 to 30 militants, including up to eight foreign fighters, remaining in Marawi. They are still holding about 20 hostages.

Terrorism expert Ahmad Kumar Ramakrishna from Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies said if Mahmud Ahmad survived he would likely take over the leadership of IS-linked fighters in the southern Philippines.

Intelligence officials describe Mahmud as a financier and recruiter, who helped put together the coalition of pro-IS fighters that stormed Marawi City in May, following a foiled attempt by security forces to arrest Hapilon.

The 39-year-old Mahmud, who holds a doctorate in religious studies and was a university lecturer in Kuala Lumpur, was Hapilon’s second-in-command in the IS’s Southeast Asia “caliphate”, according to a July report by Indonesia-based Institute of Policy Analysis and Conflict (IPAC).

He was the contact for foreigners wanting to join the fight in the Philippines or with IS in the Middle East, it said.

“It wasn’t just Indonesians and Malaysians contacting Dr. Mahmud ... he was also the contact for Bangladeshis in Malaysia who wanted to join the fighting in Mindanao,” said IPAC’s director Sidney Jones.

Ahmad El-Muhammady, a lecturer at the International Islamic University of Malaysia and a counter-terrorism advisor to the police, said Mahmud often solicited funds for IS operations.

“He’s always the one asking people ”does anyone have any money they’d like to donate?“, and he will usually reply when followers in the region ask him about the situation in the Philippines,” Dr Ahmad said.

Security experts say Mahmud studied at Pakistan’s Islamabad Islamic University in the late 1990s before going to Afghanistan where he learned to make improvised explosive devices at an al Qaeda camp.

In 2000, he returned to Malaysia to get a doctorate, which earned him a post as a lecturer in the Islamic Studies faculty at the University of Malaysia in Kuala Lumpur.

Former students described Mahmud as a quiet person who kept to himself.

“He wasn’t the kind of lecturer who hung out at cafes with his students as some others did,” said one former student, who declined to be identified.

He was put on Malaysia’s most-wanted list in April 2014 after leaving the country with several others, including his aide, a Malaysian bomb maker named Mohammad Najib Husen, to work with the Abu Sayyaf Group, notorious for violent kidnappings and beheadings in the southern Philippines.

Mahmud received funding for the Marawi operation directly from IS headquarters, through the group’s Southeast Asian unit led by Syrian-based Indonesian militant Bahrumsyah, the IPAC report said.

Intelligence officials said that Mahmud quickly gained the recognition of the Abu Sayaaf Group with his knowledge of weapons and IS propaganda.

“You could say he is a sort of decorated veteran among the IS and ASG ranks,” a source told Malaysia’s The Star newspaper.

Mahmud grew up in Batu Caves, a crowded Kuala Lumpur suburb, famous for a Hindu temple housed in a large complex of caverns. Mahmud’s wife and three children were last known to be living there.

Before leaving Malaysia in 2014, Mahmud taught young Muslim students at a tahfiz, a school to memorise the Koran, in Nakhoda, a village near Batu Caves, residents said.

“When he (Mahmud) started the school, he did stay there for the first one or two years, but then he just disappeared,” said 50-year-old Zainon Mat Arshad, a Nakhoda resident who went to the mosque where Mahmud prayed.

“When he was at the tahfiz school, he kept mostly to himself and if he had come over to pray on Friday, I don’t think anyone would have recognised him,” said Zainon. “He didn’t mingle with the local community.” AGENCIES

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