BY RAYMOND AFRICA

TEN hooded gunmen abducted a Catholic priest and a teacher in Tawi-Tawi Tuesday night and killed the priest during police pursuit operations.

Chief Supt. Joel Goltiao, chief of Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao police, yesterday said Fr. Rey Roda of the Oblate of Mary Immaculate and director of the Notre Dame of Tabawan in South Ubian, Tawi-Tawi, sustained gunshot wounds in the body.

"The reports indicated that Fr. Roda resisted and he was gunned down and killed," Goltiao said.

The condition and whereabouts of teacher Omar Taup were unknown.

Fr. Rito Daquitil, also of the OMI, said Fr. Roda had been receiving death threats from the Abu Sayyaf.

Senior Supt. Wyneright Taup, Tawi-tawi police chief, also blamed the Abu Sayyaf. "He had been receiving kidnapping threats from the Abu Sayyaf but he refused our offers to provide him with police guards," he said, adding the priest vowed never to be taken alive by the bandits.

The Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines condemned the killing.

"We are saddened by the turn of events. We condemn the violence and pray for just solution," said Archbishop Angel Lagdameo, CBCP president.

OMI provincial superior, Fr. Ramon Bernabe, said they have informed the late missionary’s immediate family as well as Jolo Bishop Angelito Rendon Lampon.

Roda, 55, was the third missionary killed in the region since 1997. He had been doing missionary work in the province for 10 years.

Investigation showed the suspects, whose faces were covered with masks and bonnets, forced their way into the Tabawan Notre Dame campus at around 9 p.m. Tuesday and dragged Fr. Roda and Taup to a speedboat about a kilometer away from the school compound.

Goltiao said operatives from the South Ubian municipal police station engaged the abductors in a running gun battle that lasted about an hour.

He said the gunmen escaped, leaving the body of Fr. Roda on the pavement.

He said the kidnappers took the teacher as they escaped toward the Tawi-Tawi mainland.

The non-government Asian Human Rights Commission said 23 priests, pastors, and churchmen were killed under the Arroyo administration in 2006. In 2007, at least three other priests were reported killed by unidentified gunmen.

An Army intelligence officer said the attack on a Catholic priest was an indication of the growing influence of al Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiah radicals on the Abu Sayyaf, brought about by the rise of a new Abu Sayyaf leader, Libya-trained Yasser Igasan.

"They’re going back to the basics," said the intelligence officer, recalling that when the Abu Sayyaf started in the early 1990s, the group was attacking Catholic churches, priests, nuns and Protestant missionaries.

But in the early part of this decade, the group switched to mainly kidnap-for-ransom, taking dozens of Westerners and others captive and freeing them for enormous sums of money.

"Igasan is trying to consolidate his control over the Abu Sayyaf and is trying to win support from Muslim communities by hitting religious targets, such as priests," the officer said. "He is trying to heighten the religious conflict." – With Reuters