At least three soldiers have been killed and 17 wounded during heavy fighting between Philippine government troops with Abu Sayyaf militants in southern Philippines, an army spokesman has said.

Maj. Filemon Tan of the Philippine military's western command said in a statement the fighting broke out around 10 a.m. Saturday local time in a remote village of Patikul, Sulu province as troops tracked the militants.

Tan said the the gun battle raged for an hour and 45 minutes.

"The (troops) continue to conduct pursuit operations and intensify the conduct of focused military operations to neutralize the Abu Sayyaf group in Sulu," Tan said.

President Rodrigo Duterte has ordered the military to hunt down Abu Sayyaf members, who are believed to be behind kidnappings for ransom in the area. The Philippine leader said he does not plan to forge a peace deal with the groups.

Duterte has met with his counterparts from Indonesia and Malaysia to discuss a coordinated security plan to curb the activities of Abu Sayyaf in Sulu sea that borders the two Southeast Asian countries.

"My order to army: destroy them, kill them," Duterte has said, adding that under his watch Abu Sayyaf members will never be granted amnesty.

"The Abu Sayyaf were decapitating people like they would juts fowls and pigs and goats. And there will be no talks. The Armed Forces is right, rejecting amnesty for them. I will not, I will never. There will never be an amnesty for so much killing," he said in September.

On Saturday, Tan said that Malaysian security forces killed three Abu Sayyaf members who attempted to carry yet another kidnapping-for-ransom attack off Lahad Datu in Sabah in Malaysia. Two other militants were arrested as a result.

Abu Sayyaf is considered the smallest but the most radical of the extremist groups operating in the impoverished southern Philippine provinces of Basilan and Sulu.

The group has carried a spate of attacks and robberies on the southern Philippines and Sulu sea, including kidnap for ransom, bombings, extortions, raids of villages in Basilan and Sulu since the early 1990s.

The military said that there are now about 350 active members of the Abu Sayyaf group. The group is active in the impoverished region, where minority Muslims have been fighting for self-rule since the 1970s.

source: Xinhua