Sumatran rhino footprints believed found on Borneo

JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Several footprints believed to be from critically endangered Sumatran rhino have been found on Indonesia's Borneo island, raising hopes for the existence of an animal long thought to be extinct in that area, a conservation group said Thursday.

The fresh tracks were discovered in February while a WWF team was monitoring orangutans in West Kutai forested district of East Kalimantan province, according to a statement.

A follow-up survey carried out by the team, along with government forestry officials and scientists from Mulawarman University, discovered more footprints, horn scratches at mud holes, trees used as rubbing posts and bite marks on plants. But the number of potential animals remains unclear.

The rhino has been thought to be extinct on Indonesia's part of Borneo since the 1990s. Fewer than 200 animals still live in the wild in Indonesia and Malaysia, threatened by loss of habitat and poaching.

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Malaysia says 31 Filipinos fatally shot in Borneo

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — Malaysian security forces gunned down 31 Filipino intruders in Borneo on Thursday, the highest number of casualties in a single day since nearly 200 members of a Philippine Muslim clan took over an entire village last month, police said.

However, representatives of the Filipino group denied their members had been killed.

The armed clansmen have wreaked political havoc for both Malaysia and the neighboring Philippines by trying to stake a long-dormant royal territorial claim to Malaysia's sprawling, resource-rich state of Sabah in Borneo.

Most of the Filipinos had eluded capture in a coastal Sabah district filled with palm oil plantations and forested hills after Malaysian forces attacked them with airstrikes and mortar fire on Tuesday.

Police and military forces tracking them waged a fierce gunbattle that ended in the deaths of 31 clansmen Thursday, national police chief Ismail Omar said, adding that no Malaysians were injured.

But Abraham Idjirani, a Philippine-based representative for the clansmen, said he spoke by telephone Thursday evening with the group's leader, who insisted all of them remained accounted for. He claimed Malaysian forces had instead killed dozens of civilian villagers.

The conflicting claims could not immediately be explained.

Ismail said at least 52 Filipinos have now been killed in the past week since hostilities in the Sabah security crisis escalated. Eight policemen also were fatally shot by the Filipino clansmen and their allies last week in various parts of Sabah.

Less than two hours before the announcement of the casualties, Prime Minister Najib Razak rejected a cease-fire call by Philippine-based members of the clan led by Jamalul Kiram III, who claims to be the sultan, or hereditary ruler, of the southern, predominantly Muslim province of Sulu in the Philippines.

A brother of Kiram, the sultan who lives in Manila, is heading the group in Sabah. Kiram had ordered them to observe a unilateral cease-fire starting Thursday afternoon by holding their current position and taking a defensive posture.

Najib responded by saying Malaysia would accept only unconditional surrender by the clansmen, who slipped into Sabah by sea around Feb. 9.

"They have to surrender their arms. They have to do it as soon as possible," Najib said at a nationally televised news conference.

"Don't believe this offer of a cease-fire by Jamalul Kiram," Malaysian Defense Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi wrote on Twitter. "For the sake of the people of Sabah and Malaysia, eliminate all militants first."

Idjirani said a cease-fire would be in line with a statement of concern by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon late Wednesday.

Ban "urges an end to the violence and encourages dialogue among all the parties for a peaceful resolution of the situation," according to the statement issued by Ban's representative.

Ban voiced concerns about how the crisis might affect civilians, including Filipino migrants in Sabah, and urged "all parties to facilitate delivery of humanitarian assistance and act in full respect of international human rights norms and standards," according to the statement.

Malaysia's government has insisted it made every effort to coax the Filipinos to leave and had to use force after the group fatally shot two policemen last week. Six other police officers were ambushed and killed by other Filipinos believed to be linked to the clansmen in another Sabah district.

The Filipinos say Sabah belonged to their royal sultanate for more than a century and should be handed back. Malaysia has dismissed their claim to the state, which has been part of Malaysia for five decades.

An estimated 800,000 Filipinos, mostly Muslims from insurgency-plagued southern provinces, have settled in Sabah over the years to seek work and stability.

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Associated Press writers Hrvoje Hranjski and Oliver Teves in Manila, Philippines, contributed to this report.

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Malaysia attacks Filipinos to end Borneo siege

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia (AP) — Malaysian security forces attacked a group of armed Filipinos early Tuesday to end the group's three-week occupation of a Borneo village, the prime minister said after the siege turned violent and became Malaysia's biggest security crisis in years.

Najib Razak confirmed the assault was launched Tuesday morning after clashes have killed eight policemen and he declared over the weekend that security forces were authorized to take any action deemed necessary.

The main group of intruders comprises nearly 200 members of a Philippine Muslim clan, some bearing rifles, who slipped past naval patrols last month, landed at a remote Malaysian coastal village in eastern Sabah state's Lahad Datu district and insisted the territory was theirs.

Nineteen Filipino gunmen have also been slain since Friday in skirmishes that shocked Malaysians unaccustomed to such violence in their country, which borders insurgency-plagued southern provinces in the Philippines and Thailand.

The trespassers are surrounded by security forces as well as an undetermined number of other armed Filipinos suspected to have encroached on two other districts within 300 kilometers (200 miles) of Lahad Datu.

Army reinforcements from other states in Malaysia were being deployed to Sabah and would help police bolster public confidence by patrolling various parts of the state's eastern seaboard, Sabah police chief Hamza Taib said Monday.

The Philippine government asked Malaysia on Monday to exercise maximum tolerance to avoid further bloodshed.

Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert del Rosario headed to Kuala Lumpur for talks on the crisis with his Malaysian counterpart, spokesman Raul Hernandez said. The Philippines will also ask that Malaysia allow a Philippine navy ship with medical and social workers to travel to Lahad Datu to care for the wounded and take them and others back home, Hernandez said in Manila.

Some activists say the crisis illustrates an urgent need to review border security and immigration policies for Sabah, where hundreds of thousands of Filipinos have headed in recent decades — many of them illegally — to seek work and stability.

Groups of Filipino militants have occasionally crossed into Sabah to stage kidnappings, including one that involved island resort vacationers in 2000. Malaysia has repeatedly intensified its patrols, but the long and porous sea border with the Philippines remains difficult to guard.

Some in Muslim-majority Malaysia advocated patience in handling the Lahad Datu intruders who arrived Feb. 9. But the deaths of the Malaysian police officers, including six who were ambushed while inspecting a waterfront village in a separate Sabah district on Saturday, have triggered widespread alarm over the possibility of more such intrusions.

The Filipinos who landed in Lahad Datu, a short boat ride from the southern Philippines, have rebuffed calls for them to leave, claiming Sabah belonged to their royal sultanate for over a century and adding that Malaysia has been paying a paltry amount to lease the vast territory with many palm plantations for decades. The group is led by a brother of Sultan Jamalul Kiram III of the southern Philippine province of Sulu. The identities of other suspected Filipino intruders whose presence became known in two more Sabah districts over the weekend were unclear.

The Malaysian government has not commented on the claim that it has been paying rent to the Philippine sultanate for Sabah.

For the second time in two days, Philippine President Benigno Aquino III went on national TV to urge the Filipino group in Lahad Datu to lay down their arms, warning that the situation could worsen and endanger about 800,000 Filipinos settlers there.

The crisis could have wide-ranging political ramifications in both countries. Some fear it might undermine peace talks brokered by Malaysia between Manila and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the main Muslim rebel group in the southern Philippines.

It also could jeopardize public confidence in Malaysia's long-ruling National Front coalition, which is gearing up for general elections that must be held by the end of June. The coalition requires strong support from voters in Sabah to fend off an opposition alliance that hopes to end more than five decades of federal rule by the National Front.

The U.S. Embassy in Kuala Lumpur issued an advisory Monday urging American citizens to avoid traveling to much of Sabah's east coast, which includes towns that are embarkation points for nearby diving resort islands, because of the potential for more violence.

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Associated Press writers Hrvoje Hranjski and Jim Gomez in Manila, Philippines, contributed to this report.

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