Philippine troops hunt rebels who kidnapped Americans

MANILA, Philippines -- Recently freed American hostage Gracia Burnham left the Philippines on Monday to meet her three children in Kansas, sometimes smiling and once near tears after her yearlong ordeal at the hands of Muslim extremist kidnappers.

In comments at the airport before her departure, Burnham, her voice often cracking, delivered harsh words for her captors and praised her rescuers and supporters.

"We needed every single prayer you said for us during our ordeal in the jungle," said Burnham, 43, who was in a wheelchair with a gunshot wound to her right thigh. "We especially want to thank the military men, the Americans, the Filipinos who risked and even gave their lives to rescue us."

Burnham was rescued Friday when Philippine soldiers ambushed her captors of the Abu Sayyaf group, which is believed to have links to the al-Qaida terrorist network. Her husband, Martin, and Filipino hostage Ediborah Yap were killed in the two-hour shootout.

Burnham, who suffered a poor diet and frequent shootouts in the jungles of the southern Philippines for a year, said her captors "are not men of honor" and should be treated as "common criminals."

The Burnhams, from Wichita, Kan., had been working as missionaries in the Philippines for 16 years when they were abducted on May 27 last year from a resort island as they celebrated their 18th wedding anniversary.

The body of Martin Burnham, who was 42, is being examined at a U.S. military base in Japan and should return to America in a few days.

About 1,000 U.S. troops are in the southern Philippines training Filipino soldiers who are battling the Abu Sayyaf.

The Philippine army launched the rescue mission on Friday after U.S. troops used surveillance technology to help pinpoint the Abu Sayyaf captors.

Meanwhile, the Philippine military launched a three-pronged offensive focusing on the mountainous, jungle-covered islands of Jolo, Basilan and Mindanao. The area is in a 60-mile stretch of the Sulu Sea in the extreme southwest of the Philippines.

The Muslim rebels were more vulnerable now that they no longer held hostages as human shields, said Maj. Gen. Ernesto Carolina, head of southern Philippine forces.

"We're now operating with greater intensity," Carolina said. "We will not let them get away with this."

The Abu Sayyaf forces on Basilan and Mindanao are thought to number less than 100 fighters, down from more than 1,000 a year ago, after steady army attacks. Several hundred more fighters may still inhabit Jolo island.

On Sunday, air force helicopters rocketed a southern Philippine village inhabited by a different communist guerrilla group, killing at least nine rebels, an official said.

Meanwhile, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo told reporters that U.S. advisers who are training Philippine troops and planning missions might be upgraded to the company level, putting them closer to the fighting.

"We will have to finish this war because terrorism is a scourge on the Earth," Arroyo said.

U.S. soldiers include special operations troops, pilots, support staff and military engineers on Basilan and western Mindanao who are on a six-month training mission.

Their role in the new offensive wasn't immediately clear. The Americans have used surveillance and satellite technology to help the local army, and U.S. pilots and medics have entered combat zones to retrieve and treat Filipino wounded.