MANILA: Philippine militants that want to ally with Daesh terror group have beheaded two local hostages, police said Wednesday.

Police on the southern island of Mindanao recovered the decapitated corpses of the two men on Tuesday, nine days after they were taken, said the police chief of Lanao del Sur province.

“Salvador Hanobas and Jemark Hanobas were beheaded by their abductors,” Senior Superintendent Rustom Duran told reporters by telephone. “Locals brought the heads and the torsos to the mayor’s office.”

It was unclear if the two victims were related. Duran said the kidnappers belonged to a militant group that battled government forces for a week in February, leaving three soldiers dead and forcing 20,000 people to flee their homes.

Police found black flags identical to those flown by Daesh terrorists in Iraq and Syria in the fighters’ hideout in the remote Mindanao town of Butig.

Duran said the group had also abducted six workers at a local sawmill on April 4, accusing them of being military informers. Four were freed unharmed on Monday.

A separatist insurgency has raged for more than four decades in the southern Philippines, leaving more than 120,000 people dead.

Efforts to secure a peace deal with the largest rebel group, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), collapsed after Parliament failed to pass a law to create an autonomous Muslim region in Mindanao.

MILF leaders have warned the collapse of the peace deal could embolden hard-line militants who want to resume a violent separatist uprising.

News of the beheadings came after the Abu Sayyaf, another militant group, released a retired Italian priest held hostage for six months last week.

A major firefight broke out afterwards on the remote southern island of Basilan on Friday, leaving 18 soldiers and more than two dozen Abu Sayyaf gunmen dead.