FIRST SOLDIER KILLED: Najib blamed for "politicking" & not focusing on Sabah crisis as death toll climbs

The death of a soldier, the first casualty for the Malaysian army, has dealt a fresh blow to Prime Minister Najib Razak's administration, which is already struggling to overcome mounting criticism that the heavy death toll could have been avoided if not for his slow and heavy-handed "mishandling".

On Tuesday afternoon, Armed Forces chief Zulkifeli Mohd Zin confirmed that Private Mohd Hurairah, who hailed from Kelantan, had been killed at 7.45am during a mopping-up exercise to flush out Sulu militants in the area.

"They had a gun fight with five armed men who then retreated," Zulkifeli told a press conference about 15km from where the shootings occurred. In the shootout, 3 Sulu gunmen were killed.

Bungling Najib has to take responsibility for the high casualties 

This brings the Malaysian death toll to 9. Eight police officers were killed in previous skirmishes with the gunmen, who had slipped past a lax security system to land by boats in Lahad Datu earlier last month.

The group of some 200 gunmen, who claim to have been sent by the Sulu Sultan to reclaim Sabah, hade refused to leave despite several attacks by the Malaysian security forces to flush and eject them from the state. So far, more than 60 gunmen have been killed.

Tan Kee Kwong, a former deputy minister who frequently visited Felda Sahabat settlement in Lahad Datu, minced no words in castigating Najib's "misreading" of the situation.

"Najib misread the whole situation. His timing was all out. Firstly, he negotiated with them and called them intruders when he should have right from the start treated them as being a potential danger to our people and our forces. It was only after the first 2 policemen were killed that the Malaysian government suddenly call the Sulu gunmen militants. Now they are pointing the finger at everyone except for themselves," Kee Kwong, who is now a senior leader with Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim's PKR party.

"I have no qualms in saying this because I have been to the Felda Sahabat camp at least 5 times. The terrain there is flat. It is easy to contain if right from the start, Najib had listened to advice and sent the marines to blockade the waters. Then send in the Vat 69 (commandos), get the police to cordon off the area to protect the neighboring villages and bring in the army with heavy artillery to form another ring after the police. Cut off water and food. Let me tell you, as a medical doctor, no one can survive without water for 7 days. Run down the resistance of the enemy and then attack, not simply send in the police who should not have been deployed to raid the village in the first place."

Gunmen still at large, but Najib is busy "politicking"

According to Kee Kwong, due to the delay - as Najib had only acted 3 weeks after the gunmen landed - it is no longer easy to resolve the crisis as they seem to have succeeded in escaping tight police and army cordons as well as a heavy bombing exercise that was carried out last week.

"Now the gunmen seem to be all over the area and mind you, this is after the bombing by the F18 and Hawk fighter jets. Our Armed Forces are doing the best they can under the circumstances but when you have a fool at the head, it is very difficult to pick up the pieces. This is what is now happening. Najib should be going all out to focus on resolving the crisis in Sabah, but what we see is that he is still busy politicking for the general elections. He is even politicizing the incident so as to blame Anwar and score points for himself."

Kee Kwong's views were echoed by DAP adviser Lim Kit Siang, who also criticized Najib for interfering in the military's work.

"I have no doubt if the top security forces had been allowed a free hand to deal with the Sulu armed invasion, recognizing them from the start as 'militants' instead of having to put up with the political leadership’s categorization branding them as 'intruders - neither militants nor terrorists', the 8 police national heroes who were killed in Lahad Datu and Semporna would still be alive today and the Sabah Sulu crisis would have ended swiftly, surgically and even peacefully, instead of being dragged out for a month , involving protracted negotiations, stand-offs and shoot-outs, with no end yet in sight, and with such a heavy cost in human lives among the security forces," said Kit Siang in a statement released this afternoon.

Malaysia Chronicle