MUSLIM guerrillas in the Philippines Wednesday beheaded two Christian preachers in a violent response to President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s claim that the rebels were on the run and almost defeated.

　Officials said the heads of the two were found early yesterday wrapped in plastic in a market in the main town of southern Jolo island, two days after the Abu Sayyaf guerrillas seized them and six other hostages.

　“It’s a challenge. The military will know how to respond to this,” presidential Press Secretary Ignacio Bunye said on Manila radio. The kidnappings were the first carried out by the Abu Sayyaf since U.S. special forces concluded a six-month counter-terrorism exercise in the southern Philippines designed to help local troops defeat the country’s most radical Muslim group.

　It also happened just weeks after President Arroyo claimed victory over the Abu Sayyaf, saying the military had substantially degraded the group’s capability to strike again.

　Arroyo made the claim after a gunbattle between soldiers and the guerrillas in the Zamboanga peninsula in which senior Abu Sayyaf leader Abu Sabaya was believed killed. Authorities had believed the hostages were mainly cosmetics sales agents, but military commander Brigadier Tolentino said they had been wrongly identified and were Jehovah’s Witnesses.

　“This is a barbaric act by a barbaric group trying to propagate their religion,” Tolentino said of the killings. “They are showing their crusade not to allow Christians to enter their community.”

　Two other hostages — both Muslims — were earlier freed but the four women were still in captivity, he added.

　Both the dead had been identified by their families, he said.

　The two men killed and the four women still held hostage were all residents of Zamboanga, the Christian-dominated city on the mainland, authorities said.

　Jolo is about 1000 km south of Manila. They had been carrying Bibles and Christian leaflets, officials said. Jolo, a lawless island bristling with armed gangs, is dominated by Muslims. It is a stronghold of the Abu Sayyaf, but also is home to other rebel groups fighting Manila’s rule, bandits and pirates. The Abu Sayyaf claims to be fighting for a Muslim homeland in the south of the Roman Catholic Philippines but its activities are mostly restricted to kidnap for ransom. (SD-Agencies)