MANILA, Philippines (AP) — The Philippine military is verifying a claim by Abu Sayyaf militants that they have kidnapped a German man from a yacht and shot and killed his female companion, whose suspected body was found in the abandoned boat in the southern Philippines, officials said Monday. The body of Sabina Wetch was found on board the yacht Rockall Sunday, Maj. Felimon Tan, spokesman of the Armed Forces of the Philippines’ (AFP) Western Mindanao Command (Westmincom)

The military said ASG sub-leader Muamar Askali alias Abu Rami had claimed that his group abducted Juegen Kantner. It’s not clear why the woman was purportedly killed, but it’s possible she may have fought back or tried to escape, Tan and another military official said. On Sunday, residents of Laparan Island in the Mindanao island group discovered the body of a female foreigner believed to be aged in her fifties on a yacht bearing a German flag and the name "Rock all (sic)," Western Mindanao Command said on its Facebook page. The body was found naked and with gunshot wounds on the yacht which bore a German flag and was docked on a remote island in the Sulu archipelago, a stronghold of the Abu Sayyaf, an al-Qaeda linked group notorious for kidnapping and increasingly, piracy. A confidential Philippine government threat assessment report seen by The Associated Press said the militants have pocketed at least 353 million pesos ($7.3 million) from ransom kidnappings in the first six months of the year and have turned to abductions of foreign tugboat crewmen as military offensives restricted their mobility. The government report said the Abu Sayyaf had 481 fighters with 438 firearms in the first half of the year, but the military reported last week that it had killed 70 of the militants and captured 32 others since July in Basilan and Sulu, a Muslim province about 950 kilometers (590 miles) south of Manila.
The armed group Abu Sayyaf kidnaps a German national and murders his female companion off the coast of Mindanao in the Philippines.