Two US troops killed in Philippines: military

MANILA — Two US soldiers and a Filipino marine were killed on Tuesday in a landmine explosion on the restive southern Philippine island of Jolo, a spokesman for the Philippines military said.

Two Philippine Marines were also wounded in the blast near a local Marine outpost outside the town of Indanan, said spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Romeo Brawner in Manila. He did not elaborate.

The US embassy said it was looking into the incident but gave no details.

However police sources in the south said that the landmine explosion came while Philippine soldiers in the area were carrying out operations against local Muslim extremists with ties to the Al-Qaeda network.

Troops in Jolo have been battling members of the Abu Sayyaf, a Muslim group known for carrying out bombing and kidnapping attacks that have often targeted Christians and foreigners.

The head of military forces in the southern Philippines, Major General Benjamin Dolorfino, confirmed there had been an explosion involving the US troops but gave no details.

Asked if the Americans were involved in combat operations, he said: "No, they were just there to help in building a school."

A small contingent of US military advisers has been based in the southern Philippines since 2006 to help train local troops in battling the Abu Sayyaf.

Under an agreement between the two nations, the US forces are allowed only to train and advise the Philippine soldiers, and are banned from engaging in combat operations.

An American soldier, taking part in military exercises in the south, was killed and another seriously wounded when a bomb, believed to have been planted by the Abu Sayyaf, went off in a bar in the port city of Zamboanga in October 2002.

The Abu Sayyaf was established in the early 1990s, allegedly with seed money from Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda network, to fight for a Muslim state in the south of this mainly Roman Catholic nation.

It has kidnapped dozens of foreign aid workers, missionaries and tourists and was blamed for the country's worst terrorist strike, the bombing of a ferry in 2004 that killed more than 100 people.