Philippine military pounds rebel Muslim positions
Posted: 12 August 2008 0456 hrs

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ALEOSAN: The Philippine military pounded rebel Muslim positions in the south as fighting intensified, eyewitnesses said on Monday, after the country's Supreme Court stalled a long-awaited peace deal.

The military let off a barrage of artillery and mortar fire from a muddy mound next to a highway, while helicopter gunships swooped low over trees firing rockets, an AFP reporter said.

It was the biggest flare-up of violence between the two sides since August 4, when the Supreme Court ordered the government to suspend plans to establish an extended Muslim homeland in the southern Philippines.

The decision saw a number of Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) rebels take control of mainly Christian villages and towns in North Cotabato province, a poor farming region in the southern island of Mindanao.

The military says 1,500 renegade MILF rebels have "dug in" in remote villages in the province, and the fighting has forced nearly 130,000 people from their homes and into government refugee centres.

Dozens of civilians, mainly women and children, could be seen trudging along the main highway, carrying bundles of clothes and pots and pans on their backs as they fled the fighting.

"Fighting between government troops and a breakaway group of the MILF will not disrupt the ongoing peace process," presidential peace adviser Hermogenes Esperon said in a statement on Monday.

One soldier was killed and 12 others wounded with "reliable reports" that seven MILF fighters had been slain so far, said military vice-chief of staff Lieutenant General Cardozo Luna.

Authorities have closed the main road linking Cotabato and Davao City in Mindanao and set up military checkpoints.

Luna said the military operation was not directed against MILF in general, but a group headed by MILF commander Umbra Kato, who is no longer following the orders of the main rebel leadership.

Armed MILF fighters occupied areas around a number of Christian towns in North Cotabato last week after the Supreme Court issued its order to suspend a draft homeland accord between the government and the MILF.

Defence Secretary Gilberto Teodoro said that "operations will not cease, until the five towns are cleared."

The 12,000-strong MILF has been waging a 30-year guerrilla campaign for a separate Islamic state in the south of the largely Christian Philippines.

The rebels signed a ceasefire with the government in 2003 to open the way for peace talks, and both sides said in July they had completed a draft agreement for recognition of MILF's "ancestral domain" in the south.

However, local officials in Mindanao opposed the agreement and filed a suit with the Supreme Court, leading to a suspension of the draft accord and raising new tensions with the MILF.

The court has asked the government to submit arguments defending the agreement.

Despite the fighting, local elections in the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) went ahead as planned on Monday to elect the governor, vice-governor and 24 assemblymen.

The MILF had asked the elections be deferred until the current peace negotiations could be concluded but Congress said it did not have time to call the elections off.

There were incidents of MILF members snatching ballots on the island of Basilan but it was not clear if this was related to the decision to go ahead with the vote.

The ARMM came into being in 1996 following a peace deal between the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) and the government.

The ARMM comprises the mainly Muslim provinces of Basilan, Sulu, Tawi-Tawi, Lanao del Sur and Maguindanao in the southern region of Mindanao, but not North Cotabato. - AFP/de