Feb 132013
 

KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — Malaysian police say an armed group believed to be from the southern Philippines has intruded into Malaysian territory on Borneo island.

National police chief Ismail Omar says security forces have surrounded the intruders in the remote coastal district of Lahad Datu in Malaysia’s eastern Sabah state and ordered them to surrender their weapons.

Ismail’s statement late Wednesday did not disclose the number of suspects or how they were armed.

Sabah is less than an hour by speedboat from the southern Philippines, which has long been wracked by a Muslim separatist insurgency.

Ismail said the group landed in Sabah on Tuesday following “troubles in the southern Philippines.”

Other police representatives in Kuala Lumpur and Sabah said they could not elaborate beyond the statement.