Muslim separatist rebels attacked a village in the southern Philippines, killing a pro-government militiaman and triggering heavy military reprisals, officials said yesterday.
Some 100 members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) raided the village of Rangaban in Midsayap town on Mindanao island and robbed farmers of their livestock and harvest, the military said.
They also killed a militiaman deputized by the military and hurt another, forcing hundreds of civilians to evacuate and troops to retaliate with artillery and air strikes, regional army spokesman Colonel Julieto Ando said.
Sporadic clashes were continuing early yesterday in several villages, and government and MILF negotiators were working to prevent a further escalation of violence that could affect peace talks.
Philippine President Gloria Arroyo's adviser on the peace process, Jesus Dureza, said the "situation has started to normalize" with social workers and disaster relief agencies alerted to the evacuations.
"The unfortunate incident in Midsayap is now being handled by the joint ceasefire committee of the government and MILF," Dureza said.
"We are now moving to assist the evacuees," Dureza said, adding that he would personally visit the area as soon as possible.
MILF spokesman Eid Kabalu denied that the MILF had started the fighting, and accused government forces of touching off the conflict by encroaching on villages occupied by rebel units and their families.
"But we are working on preventing the clashes from escalating," Kabalu said by phone from his base in Mindanao.
"Our ceasefire mechanism is being put to the test," Dureza said.
The 12,000-strong MILF has been waging a separatist rebellion in Mindanao since 1978. It however signed a truce with Manila in 1993 and denounced all links to foreign terrorist groups to pave the way for formal peace talks.
Negotiations have been repeatedly bogged down by MILF demands for economic control of areas they claim as their "ancestral domain."
The Midsayap incident came just days after the presidential palace said that a final agreement with the MILF could be reached within the year.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion