Special forces stage bus hostage exercise, Aquino reax
(9 Sep 2010) 1. Armed members of Philippine national police special action force (SAF) prepare to launch assault on bus during mock hostage drama 2. Wide of assault team beside bus, then stun grenade explodes inside front of bus, smoking coming out of bus, SAF members break down windows and prepare to storm bus 3. Tight of SAF members aiming weapons through shattered windows of bus 4. Wide of Armoured Personnel Carrier (APC) ramming front of bus 5. SAF members escort mannequin purporting to be rescued hostage to safety 6. Mid of President Benigno Aquino III with Police Director Catalino Cuy, head of the SAF, watching exercise 7. SAF members escort person off bus to safety 8. Mid of SAF members by bus UPSOUND: (English) "For your info, we neutralised the hostagetaker and rescued all the hostages. Any advice, commander?" 9. Wide of APC and SAF members beside bus 10. Cutaway of media 11. SOUNDBITE (English/Tagalog) Benigno Aquino, Philippines' president "Well, this is what I was expecting that is the bottom line, let the investigation committee to finish their work to see what actually transpired and why certain things did not happen." 12. Wide of sniper rifles and other rifles on display 13. Aquino holding up sniper rifle and looking through its scope STORYLINE: Members of the Special Action Force of the Philippine national police demonstrated their skills in a mock bus hostage rescue operation on Thursday. President Benigno Aquino III attended the demonstration, which took place at Camp Bagong Diwa in Taguig city, east of Manila. The drill was prompted by the botched rescue of a tourists who had been taken hostage by a dismissed police captain on 23 August. Eight visitors from Hong Kong were killed, as was the hostage-taker, when police stormed the bus after a standoff that had dragged on for hours on live television around the world. Three tourists were seriously injured in the botched operation. The nation's top law enforcement official on Thursday said that some of the victims in the failed hostage rescue may have been hit by police fire. The justice secretary said bullet trajectories and the hostages' wounds indicated that some may have been hit by "friendly fire". She did not say, however, whether any of the shots fired by police were fatal and added that investigators would await a complete ballistics report before drawing any final conclusions. The new details of the investigation emerged as Aquino on Thursday said he was through apologising for the attack and would focus instead on easing tensions with China and Hong Kong, where officials have criticised the handling of the hostage crisis. After attending the drill, the president reiterated that he would wait for a report from a fact-finding committee before he fired any officials for the fiasco. Earlier, he had said that a police Special Action Force trained for hostage rescue was not deployed on 23 August as promised. Instead, a local Manila police SWAT team was used in the assault. Television footage showed the team was unprepared and took about an hour to break into the bus instead of just seconds, Aquino said. Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork Twitter: / ap_archive Facebook: / aparchives Instagram: / apnews You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/you...
