|
Friday, August 08, 2008
Fighting erupts in Cotabato town
MANILA (Updated, 12 p.m.) -- Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) rebels attacked a military detachment in the outskirts of Aleosan town in North Cotabato on Friday morning, hours after agreeing to comply a government ultimatum to leave several occupied villages by Friday.
MILF Vice Chairman Ghazali Jaafar said the agreement was reached late Thursday in a meeting of a joint ceasefire committee, ahead of the Friday morning deadline for the rebels to withdraw their forces from five towns in North Cotabato province.
Visit the Beijing Olympics 2008 blog
Major Randolph Cabangbang, acting spokesman of the military's Eastern Mindanao Command, said at least 50 rebels began sniping troops at the detachment on Baliki village around 5 a.m. Friday. The government's 24-hour deadline was to end at 10 a.m.
Cabangbang said around 6:30 a.m. the MILF guerrillas fired an 81 mm mortar at the detachment, which had been the subject of rebel atrocities for the past weeks.
Cabangbang said no one was reported killed or injured on both sides during the subsequent fighting.
"There was subsequent fighting because those in the detachment were fired upon so they fired back. There were at least 50 rebels involved in the harassment. It was not apparently their intention to overrun the detachment, the merely harassed the detachment," he said.
Related story:
Gov't gives MILF 24 hours to leave areas
MILF official denies occupying lands
Meanwhile, National Police Chief Avelino Razon confirmed Friday that the rebel response to the deadline was positive.
Top police and defense officials in Manila accused the rebels Thursday of burning houses, destroying farms, stealing cattle and driving away 6,500 residents from their homes. They gave the rebels 24 hours to pull back or face attack.
The tensions come at a delicate moment in the peace effort. The government and the MILF rebels were set to sign a preliminary accord expanding an autonomous Muslim region in exchange for ending the bloody insurgency, but the Supreme Court, acting on a petition by North Cotabato politicians, blocked it Monday.
The leaders in the predominantly Roman Catholic province earlier accused government officials of ignoring their pleas for help in dealing with the rebels.
Many of the villages are located in the marshy border between North Cotabato, a bustling agricultural province of more than a million people, and Maguindanao, a sprawling province of mostly Muslim residents where the MILF has large rural camps. North Cotabato is about 560 miles (960 kilometers) south of Manila.
Jaafar said the rebels will reposition their forces from the villages to a rebel camp starting Friday. Asked why the rebels took the villages in the first place, he said several MILF members had "problems" in the area and other guerrillas joined them and established a presence there.
Similar local incidents of land grabbing and cattle rustling have occasionally threatened a 2003 ceasefire but so far have not escalated into any major fighting.
The rebels - with an estimated 11,000 armed fighters - have been battling for self-rule in the predominantly Roman Catholic nation's volatile south for four decades, with thousands dying in the conflict.
Under the preliminary agreement that was to have been signed Tuesday in Malaysia, the existing five-province autonomous Muslim region in the south would be expanded to add more than 700 villages, provided residents approve the move in a vote.
The agreement would also grant the rebels sweeping powers in running their affairs, and prompted angry protests by Christians in the main southern region of Mindanao as well as by Manila's political opposition.
US and Philippine officials hope a final peace accord can transform the resource-rich southern Philippines into a bustling economic hub instead of a breeding ground for terrorists.(AP/VR/Sunnex)
For more Philippine news, visit Sun.Star Davao. (August 8, 2008 issue)
Write letter to the editor. Click here. |
|
|
|
[return to top]
[home]
|
|
