Philippine soldier and wife killed

PHILIPPINES: Gunmen killed an army officer, his wife and an armed guard and set fire to their bodies in a brutal bus ambush in the Philippines' strife-torn south, the military said Wednesday. Extortionists are believed to be behind the atrocity late Tuesday, the latest in a series of attacks on buses plying the roads of Mindanao island, said local military official Colonel Buenaventura Pascual.

"We have launched a combined military and police operation to get these people who have been conducting extortion in the highway," said Pascual, head of a local counter-terrorist task force. ZAMBOANGA, Wednesday, AFP