Philippine troops attack Daesh-linked militants

Armored personnel carriers are deployed by the Philippine Army in a firefight in barangay Caloocan, Marawi City, on May 23, 2017. (Photo by AFP)

Philippine troops battled heavily armed militants backing the Daesh group in a southern city Tuesday, as months of sporadic fighting in the countryside shifted alarmingly into an urban area.

Regional military spokesman Lt. Col. Joar Herrera said five government personnel were wounded in the clash with at least 15 fighters from a rebel group called Maute in the village of Basak Malutlut in Marawi, a city in Lanao del Sur province.

Troops and special police forces attacked an apartment after the military obtained intelligence that Maute gunmen were hiding there with a top terror suspect, Herrera and another military official said.

"We're trying our best to contain the situation," Herrera said by telephone, adding that troops were moving carefully to avoid hitting civilians in the area of the fighting.

Officials could not immediately tell with clarity what was going on, and said they were checking reports that the militants had entered a hospital and raised a black Daesh-style flag.

The Maute group is one of less than a dozen new armed groups that have pledged allegiance to the Daesh group and formed a loose alliance in the southern Philippines in recent years.

A file photo shows the Maute group boasts of loyalty to the Daesh group of Iraq and Syria and uses the black flag as its revolutionary banner. (Photo by Philstar)

It has been blamed for a bomb attack that killed 15 people in southern Davao city, President Rodrigo Duterte's hometown, last September and a number of attacks on government forces in Lanao, although it has faced setbacks from a series of military offensives.

In April, troops backed by airstrikes killed dozens of Maute militants and captured their jungle camp near Lanao del Sur's Piagapo town.

Troops found homemade bombs, grenades, combat uniforms and passports of suspected Indonesian militants in the camp.

Meanwhile, Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte declared martial law in southern Mindanao province after fighting raged in southern Marawi City between the army and
militants linked to Islamic state.

Presidential spokesman Ernesto Abella made the announcement in Moscow, where the president is on a visit.

A meeting with Dmitry Medvedev will be cancelled on Wednesday but Duterte will remain in Russia, Foreign Minister Alan Peter Cayetano said in a televised news conference.