The Philippines has become the latest ISIS target for expansion after the terror group released its first propaganda video of a terror training camp in the Filipino jungle. Several terrorist commanders are shown urging Filipinos to travel to Syria to join ISIS before revealing the group have already started their own terror camp in the Philippines.
The footage shows the 'soldiers of the Caliphate in the Philippines' working on their fitness and agility by completing a series of assault course drills.
However, this information suggests that ISIS has earmarked the Philippines as a potential site for establishing further new bases.
The new video comes after eight members of a terrorist group that pledged allegiance to ISIS were killed in a firefight with the military in the southern Philippines last month.
The bandits were from Ansar al-Khalifa, a small group that declared its support for ISIS in a video circulated on the Internet last year, regional military spokesman Major Filemon Tan said.
The larger Abu Sayyaf group has also pledged its allegiance to ISIS and is holding at least four foreign nationals hostages.
The group is demanding millions of dollars in ransom for their safe release and have released several videos threatening them with execution.
Tan told AFP that five black flags similar to those used by ISIS terrorists were recovered from the bandits after the clash.
Criminal gangs operate kidnap for ransom and extortion activities alongside extremist and communist separatist campaigns in the restive south.
While the relatively new Ansar al-Khalifa had extorted from businessmen and stolen cattle from farmers, it had no proven links with ISIS - also known by the acronym ISIL or Daesh - national military spokesman Colonel Restituto Padilla said.
'This group is trying to ride on the popularity of the ISIS, but they're not really ISIS,' he told AFP. 'We view them as mere criminal gangs.'
Tan said the military was verifying intelligence reports that one of the eight killed was an Indonesian national.