ZAMBOANGA CITY, 21 April 2007 — Filipinos recoiled in disgust and the military stepped up its offensive yesterday after extremist militants decapitated seven laborers and sent their heads to army bases.

Local television showed soldiers laying banana leaves over the headless corpses, lying on the back of a pickup truck.

The youngest victim was a 16-year-old boy who had got a summer job on Jolo to fund a college course.

The military suspects the Abu Sayyaf may have beheaded the road workers in retaliation for the killing by troops of more than 70 of its members, including two top leaders, in an eight-month US-backed campaign.

The armed forces have ordered their troops to step up operations against the Abu Sayyaf and members of regional terrorist network Jemaah Islamiyah, who use the southern island of Jolo in the Sulu archipelago as a base to plot and train.

“The beheading of the seven captives in Sulu once again demonstrates the Abu Sayyaf’s ruthlessness and only strengthens our resolve to neutralize them,” President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo said.

The military estimates that the Abu Sayyaf’s core strength has been halved from around 400 fighters due to the operation.

In the southern city of Cotabato, Aleem Sharif Jul Aberin, the mufti of the Sulu archipelago, said decapitating people defied reason and religion.

In Manila, people said the military should storm the Abu Sayyaf’s hideouts.

“These people have no place in this world. They are the scum of the earth. They should be the one’s killed not innocent people,” said Francisco Layug, 42, a taxi driver in the capital.

Abu Sayyaf, which gained international notoriety for capturing and beheading tourists and church workers around five years ago, carried out the Philippines’ worst terrorist attack, the bombing of a ferry near Manila in 2004 that killed more than 100 people.

After demanding a 5 million peso ($105,000) ransom, the captors decapitated the laborers and sent the heads to two army detachments.

One of the kidnappers rang a victim’s wife on her husband’s cellphone to apologize for what they were about to do.

Rubelyn delos Reyes, 35, pleaded in vain for mercy.

“I have five kids here and we are dependent on him,” she said tearfully. “The saddest thing is that my eldest daughter Neslyn is celebrating her 15th birthday today, they are so cruel.”