ZAMBOANGA CITY, 20 April 2007 — Abu Sayyaf extremists beheaded all seven of their civilian hostages in the troubled island of Jolo, about 950 km south of Manila, officials said yesterday.

The hostages, six of them construction workers and the remaining a fisherman, had been kidnapped April 15 in Parang town.

Their severed heads were sent to a military post on the island, said Maj. Eugene Batara, a regional army spokesman.

“Our troops are pursuing the terrorists,” Batara said.

He did not say whether the bodies had been recovered or not.

The Abu Sayyaf decapitated the hostages after the island’s governor, Benjamin Loong, rejected the group’s ransom demand.

The kidnappers had demanded at least seven million pesos in exchange for the lives of the hostages.

Six of those executed, Nonoy Ampoy, Loloy Teodoro, Roger Francisco, Toto Milas, Wilmer Santos and Dennis delos Reyes were all working for Loong’s construction firm, reports said.

The victims were heading to work when the extremists kidnapped them.

Police and military tagged the leader of the gang as Albader Parad, a notorious Abu Sayyaf commander, blamed for the spate of attacks against civilians and military targets in Jolo.

Others report said two government soldiers traveling on a civilian jeep were also kidnapped by the Abu Sayyaf at a checkpoint in Parang town, but the military said it has no information about the attack.

Meanwhile, Filipino and US military officials rewarded yesterday two civilian informers, who provided intelligence to soldiers that led to the killings of two Abu Sayyaf sub-leaders.

The duo, both wearing ski masks, received a total of $85,000 in a ceremony held inside the military’s Western Mindanao Command headquarters in Zamboanga City.

Regional military chief Lt. Gen. Eugenio Cedo said the two men provided vital information to soldiers leading to the deaths of Abu Sayyaf sub-leaders leaders Jumdan Jamalul and Binang Sali in separate clashes in January in Jolo and Tawi-Tawi islands.

Both men had been implicated in the kidnappings of Filipinos and American citizens in 2001 and the raid on Sipadan island in Malaysia in 2000 where the Abu Sayyaf took 21 Asian and European holiday-makers.

The Philippine military in March also rewarded an informant with one million pesos for helping security forces capture a notorious Abu Sayyaf sub-leader Abdullah Mohammad implicated in the kidnapping of three American citizens seven years ago.

The United States also rewarded $2,500 to the same informant for the capture of Mohammad, who is included in Washington’s terror list, in Zamboanga City. The military implicated Mohammad in the 2000 kidnapping of Kansas missionary couple Martin and Gracia Burnham and California man Guillermo Sobero and 17 other Filipino holiday-makers at the posh Dos Palmas resort in Palawan.

He was also linked to the kidnappings of dozens of people in Basilan island off Zamboanga in 2000, where 11 hostages had been beheaded.