Manila, Philippines ? Philippine armed forces, with U.S. assistance, have determined the general location of two American hostages being held by Islamic militants on the southern island of Basilan and are ready to launch operations to free them, the country’s chief military spokesman said Thursday.

Brig. Gen. Edilberto Adan said he expects new sightings of American missionary couple Martin and Gracia Burnham to come quickly, now that U.S. military personnel and high-technology surveillance and communications equipment have arrived on the island.

“Maybe in the next few days,” he said. “We have a good idea of the general location of the Burnhams. We’re now awaiting the results of our latest initiatives.”

The Abu Sayyaf extremist group also holds a third hostage, a Philippine nurse named Deborah Yap, seized from a local hospital in Basilan a few days after the Burnhams’ abduction in May.

Under a U.S.-Philippine agreement signed last month, 660 American personnel, along with aircraft and equipment, have been deployed to the Philippines to help rescue the hostages and crush the Abu Sayyaf rebels. A total of 160 U.S. Army Special Forces troops are on Basilan, with the remaining 500 uniformed personnel in support elsewhere.

“This has increased our awareness dramatically,” Adan said.

Adan described the new initiatives as a combination of three factors: American P-3 surveillance aircraft patrolling overhead, U.S. specialists on the ground trained to interpret the electronic imagery gathered from the sky, and the fruits of local informants who have been offered rewards for information on the Burnhams’ whereabouts.

“We’ve had the aircraft for a while, but there was no one on the ground to interpret what they were picking up,” Adan said. “Now they are in place.”

The Manila newspaper Philippine Star posted a report on its Web site late Thursday evening quoting the mayor of the remote Basilan village of Maluso, who claimed that all three hostages had been seen last week moving through the community. The report could not be independently confirmed.

A Philippine force of about 3,500 has been deployed on Basilan to rescue the hostages and flush out or kill Abu Sayyaf members holding them. The government estimates the group’s strength around 80 fighters.

A far larger group of several hundred Abu Sayyaf fighters is believed to be on the nearby island of Jolo.

The national television channel ABS-CBN released a videotape Thursday of Martin Burnham reading a statement warning that Abu Sayyaf is “targeting U.S. citizens, those from Europe and other nations” for a variety of grievances, including Western support for Israel, sanctions against Iraq and Libya and the presence of U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia.