There are growing signs of support for the Islamic State group in the southern Philippines, despite assertions by Manila that militants in the region are little more than criminal gangs.
It fits a pattern of increased alarm in other parts of Southeast Asia, where analysts say poverty and the manipulation of Islam for politics or profit are leaven for the jihadi movement.
"They are trying to create a mini-Islamic State in Southeast Asia, all the way from [northern Indonesia's] Aceh to the southern Philippines, and that will take in Malaysia as well," said James Chin, director of the Asia Institute at the University of Tasmania in Australia.