Dressed in military fatigues and carrying rifles, the strangers began drifting into town the night of April 3 and continued arriving the next morning. Some came on buses, others in a truck. Residents of the isolated trading town of Ipil (pop. 52,000), 500 mi. south of Manila, noticed the newcomers. But soldiers are a common sight most places in the Philippines, particularly on the turbulent southern island of Mindanao, with its history of Muslim insurgency. "We thought they were real army," said Arturo Dimla, a local accounts clerk.
Until 12:30 p.m. the next day, that is, when one of the gunmen entered the Emil Emilios Restaurant and Bakeshop and shot dead a Philippine army major as he ate lunch. For the next 21Ú2 hours, the fake soldiers made Ipil a hell on earth. They gunned down men, women and children, plundered the town's seven banks and took money from shops. "They were killing people like they do this every day," said a survivor, Loyita de los Reyes. Rogelio Villafuerte, a public-works engineer, said, "They came to town ready to start a war." The 200 or so gunmen ended the carnage around 3 p.m., then sauntered out of town, taking along 13 hostages, including a group of women wearing uniforms from Gerry's department store. Left behind were 53 dead, 44 wounded and a white flag with the name of Abu Sayyaf (Bearer of the Sword), a Muslim separatist group known to have ties to terrorists.
Interior Secretary Rafael Alunan said the attack was staged in retaliation for the arrest of six alleged Muslim militants in Manila on April 1 for illegal possession of firearms and explosives. Another theory held that the assault was simply a terrorist fund raiser: the gunmen left town with sacks of cash totaling $1 million. Whatever the motivation, the incident was the latest evidence that despite decades of fighting and negotiating, the Philippines, with a mostly Christian population of 66 million, has still to solve the problem of separatism among its 6 million Muslims. Two days after the Ipil raid, President Fidel Ramos fired the leader of the army's southern command, Brigadier General Regino Lacson, as well as the commander of the 102nd Infantry Brigade, near Ipil. At week's end Ramos flew to the town to survey the damage. After meeting with town and military officials, he barked, "Go get those terrorists and protect our communities."
The government had been expecting Abu Sayyaf to make a move as early as two weeks ago. The five-year-old group, one of several demanding either autonomy or a separate Muslim state on Mindanao, has been linked to the Islamic fundamentalists charged with planning the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center in New York City. The connections have been detailed in recent weeks by Edwin Angeles, once Abu Sayyaf's military strategist, who surrendered to Philippine authorities in February after a falling out with his fellow fighters. Angeles, backed by military intelligence, has linked Abu Sayyaf with Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, the alleged mastermind of the World Trade Center attack.