Malaysia sent hundreds of soldiers to a Borneo state on Monday to help neutralise armed Filipino intruders who have killed eight police officers in the country’s bloodiest security emergency in years.
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 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.