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Fighting flares in southern philippines 60 killed Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
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Fighting Flares in Southern Philippines, 60 Killed
Wed Feb 9, 2005 07:46 AM ET
By Manny Mogato
MANILA (Reuters) - Philippine military planes bombed Muslim rebel positions on a remote southern island on Wednesday and troops attacked guerrilla bunkers in pitched fighting that has killed 60 people in three days, officials said.
Army howitzers started shelling rebel positions at dawn and 3,000 troops staged ground assaults on the island of Jolo, the bastion of the Abu Sayyaf militants.
Helicopters fired rockets and OV-10 planes dropped 500-pound bombs on rebel fortifications, said army spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Buenaventura Pascual.
Abu Sayyaf, a small group linked to the al Qaeda network of Osama bin Laden, and renegades from the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) have strongholds in the mountains of Jolo, one of the largest in the string of islands that stretches across the Sulu Sea between the southern Philippines and Borneo.
The MNLF signed a peace deal with the government in 1996, but some disgruntled members joined Abu Sayyaf and were involved in several cross-border kidnappings in 2000.
"Since Monday, we have lost 20 soldiers, but we killed about 40 rebels in our punitive actions," Pascual told reporters.
More than 30 soldiers were wounded, he said.
Lieutenant-General Alberto Braganza, the most senior military commander in the southern Philippines, said another battalion of soldiers was dispatched to Jolo, arriving on Wednesday aboard a naval transport from the southern Zamboanga port city.
Two U.S. military advisers also arrived on a private plane, but were whisked away by Philippine soldiers to an army base.
Braganza said the U.S. military personnel were not directly involved in any combat operations, but were merely invited to observe, advise and provide technical assistance to enhance the local military's air-and-ground operations.
Sulu provincial governor Benjamin Loong appealed on Wednesday to both soldiers and rebels to stop fighting, saying many civilians were feared to be among the casualties.
"We want to investigate how this whole incident started," he told reporters after meeting senior military commanders at an army base near the island's main airport.
"I was told there were many civilian casualties in the mountain villages. Please spare them."
MILF NOT INVOLVED
The violence erupted on Monday when hundreds of rebels ambushed a convoy of soldiers in Patikul town. They also staged attacks in three other areas of Jolo.
The Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), which is due to restart peace talks with the government in March after breaking away from the MNLF in 1978, said its members were not involved in the clashes on Jolo.
"We remain committed to a peaceful solution," said Eid Kabalu, a spokesman for the MILF, the largest Muslim rebel group in this mainly Roman Catholic country.
The clashes on Jolo are unlikely to affect talks between the government and the larger MILF set for next month in Kuala Lumpur, although security analysts see the potential for some MILF members to break away as a peace deal draws nearer.
"The MILF has nothing to do with this," said Major- General Edilberto Adan, the military's deputy chief of staff. "At this point, we do not think the peace talks will be affected since this is confined to Sulu."
Kabalu said the MILF, mainly based on the mainland of Mindanao, had a minimal presence on Jolo. He said the MILF was ignoring calls from other rebel groups to abandon the peace talks and continue fighting for a Muslim state in the southern Philippines.
"We respect their position," Kabalu said by phone. "We have our own strategy to deal with government."
On Tuesday, Abu Solaiman, an Abu Sayyaf leader, called on the MILF to drop the peace talks being brokered by Malaysia.
"To our brothers in the MILF, don't waive our nation's honor, dignity and right," Solaiman said in a radio interview. "No amount of development can pay for our homeland's illegal and immoral occupation or annexation."
Abu Sayyaf, estimated to have about 500 fighters, was best known for kidnapping foreigners and Filipinos for ransom until it killed at least 100 people with a bomb on a passenger ferry at the mouth of Manila Bay in February 2004.
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