Bangkok: Militants allied to Islamic State have rampaged through a southern Philippine town, beheading a local police chief and kidnapping a priest and 10 parishioners, as more firefights broke out and buildings were set ablaze on Thursday.
Violence that erupted on Tuesday in Marawi, 830 kilometres south of Manila, has left at least 21 dead, 13 of them militants, and dozens wounded.
The militants have threatened to kill Father Chito Suganog and other hostages who were saying prayers when fighters stormed into St Mary's Cathedral in the town and took them as human shields.
Majul Gandamra, the town's mayor, told journalists that militants were still holed up in some buildings, surrounded by soldiers.
"They are not shooting at anyone specifically," he said, adding they were posting images on social media.
Philippine Defence Secretary Delfin Lorenzana warned residents of the town with a population of 200,000 to stay indoors on Thursday, saying top militant commander Isnilon Hapilon may still be hiding there, citing "latest reports".
Witnesses reported loud explosions in the town on Thursday as several military helicopters hovered overhead.
Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, who threatened to impose nation-wide martial law to combat the rising threat of terrorism, said the beheaded police chief was on his way home when militants stopped him at a checkpoint.
"I think they decapitated him right there and then," he told a news conference in Manila after cutting short a trip to Moscow as the violence raged in Marawi, a provincial capital with a population of 200,000.
Mr Duterte pledged that martial law he declared late on Tuesday across the southern region of Mindanao - which makes up roughly one-third of the country and is home to 20 million people - would be "harsh".
"If I think you should die, you will die. If there's open defiance, you will die and if it means many people dying, so be it. That is how it is," said the president, a former mayor of the Mindanao city of Davao.
"I will not hesitate to do anything and everything to protect and preserve the Filipino nation," he said. "I might declare martial law throughout the whole country to protect the people."
The occupation of Marawi by at least 100 heavily armed militants from the little-known Maute group has intensified fears that the Philippines faces a growing threat from Islamic State, which claimed responsibility for the rampage via its Amaq propaganda arm.
Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has warned of the possibility of Islamic State declaring a "caliphate" in the southern Philippines as extremists are forced out of the Middle East.
"This brings the threat right to our doorstep," she said in March.
It has emerged the violence that broke out in Marawi after a botched raid to capture Hapilon was greater than reported on Wednesday, as thousands of residents of the town fled.
Militants brandishing IS flags roamed the town as roof-top snipers kept troops at bay and fighters and torched a hospital, a church, a college and other buildings. They disarmed guards at two jails and set free 107 inmates.
There are unconfirmed reports of other kidnappings, but the military said 120 civilians who were taken hostage had been rescued, including 42 teachers who became trapped in a college and 78 people at a medical centre.
Among the dead were five soldiers and two policemen.
A regional drug enforcement agency chief was killed while accompanying his wife to a hospital.
The Catholic Church asked Filipinos to pray for Father Suganog and the other hostages.
"They have threatened to kill the hostages if the government forces unleashed against them are not recalled," said a statement released by the head of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of the Philippines, Archbishop Socrates Villegas.
with agencies
