Philippine troops stormed an army jail and killed 15 prisoners Tuesday after the inmates raped and killed an Australian woman missionary and took the lives of four other hostages.
Ten other hostages were freed in a series of gun battles between the soldiers and prisoners in a jail inside the military headquarters in Davao city, 600 miles southeast of Manila, a military spokesman said."Yes, she's dead. Her throat had been sliced and she had been shot through the neck," said a soldier who retrieved the body of Sydney missionary Jacqueline Hamill, 36.
Filipino Protestant pastor Fred Castillo, a hostage who escaped from the jail before the military attack, said some women, including Hamill, were raped by the prisoners Monday night.
"They were crying while it was happening. We could hear their screams," Castillo told reporters.
"She (Hamill) confessed to me afterwards," Castillo said. He said Hamill told him the prisoners pointed a knife at her before she was raped.
Brigadier General Mariano Baccay, area army commander, said he ordered the attack after learning that the prisoners had killed Hamill and other hostages.
"That was the best option available to us," Baccay said.
The prisoners, some of them convicted murderers, seized Hamill and other members of the Joyful Assembly of God, including nine women, Sunday while the religious group was conducting a Bible service.
Earlier Tuesday, after the military rejected the prisoners' demand for a getaway bus, the convicts tried to shoot their way out of the jail using Hamill and other hostages as human shields.
Army sniper fire killed the gang leader, dismissed air-force sergeant Mohammad Samparani, and drove the others back.
Gunshots were later heard from inside the jail, suggesting hostages were being killed, the military said.
Hours later soldiers, firing tear gas, attacked, hunting down the prisoners inside. The military said it suffered no casualties in the operation.
The other hostages killed were a 9-year-old boy and three women, including a 16-year-old whom the military said Samparani shot through the chest after he was hit in the head by sniper fire.
The military said Hamill suffered a slight facial wound in the initial shoot-out.
"One of the hostages . . . told us he saw her get hit, fall down but that she continued singing," an Australian Embassy spokesman said.
He said that before the shooting broke out, Hamill and the other hostages had joined in singing hymns inside the jail.
The prisoners had threatened to kill Hamill Monday after the military refused to give them a bus to escape. They called off the threat after government negotiators promised possible clemency for them.
It was the second time in eight months that a hostage drama inside a Philippine military camp had ended in a massacre.