Philippine gang leader shot dead

President Arroyo has ordered a war on kidnap gangs

Police in the Philippines say security forces have killed the leader of a notorious gang of kidnappers in a gun battle.

The dead man was named as Faisal Marohombsar, leader of the Pentagon Gang, a group of former Muslim separatist guerrillas regarded by the United States as terrorists.

Two other suspects were captured and one policeman was injured in the gun battle on Sunday in Magallanes, 65 kilometres (40 miles) south of the capital Manila.

A four-year-old girl, Patricia Chong, and her nanny, Winena Jordan, were freed from week-long captivity during the operation, police said.

Rebel's offer

Marohombsar became something of a criminal celebrity after he was arrested in February this year but escaped from custody in Manila on 19 June.

Authorities twice wrongly reported his recapture.

Marohombsar told a radio station he would give himself up if kidnapping charges against him were dropped.

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo on Sunday visited the scene of the gunfight and congratulated police and soldiers.

The freed girl was the niece of a prominent Filipino business executive from whom the gang had demanded a ransom of 100 million pesos ($1.9m).

One of the captured suspects was said to be a ''rogue'' policeman.

President Arroyo has ordered a full-scale war on the many kidnapping-for-ransom gangs in the Philippines.

Many of the groups claim religious justification for their activities, but the government says they are just after the money.

US list

The Pentagon Gang is composed of former guerrillas of the Muslim separatist movement in the southern Philippines, a predominantly Christian country.

President Arroyo visited the scene to congratulate police

Police blamed the gang for the kidnapping of Italian priest Guiseppe Pierantoni, four Chinese engineers and a South Korean trader on the southern island of Mindanao in the past two years.

Two of the Chinese died in a rescue operation.

The Pentagon Gang is on a US list of foreign terrorist organisations.

Two other Philippine armed groups are on the list:

Abu Sayyaf, which Washington has linked to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network and

The New People's Army, which has been fighting for a Marxist state for more than 30 years.

Abu Sayyaf and the Pentagon Gang are the most notorious of 21 known kidnap groups operating in the country.

US-trained Filipino troops are currently pursuing an armed group led by a nephew of an Abu Sayyaf commander on Jolo island to rescue four women members of a local Jehovah's Witnesses group kidnapped last week.

Two other Jehovah's Witnesses were beheaded.