The Philippine military pounded rebel Muslim positions in the south as fighting intensified, eyewitnesses said yesterday, 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 gun ships swooped low over trees firing rockets, a reporter said.
It was the biggest flare-up of violence between the two sides since Monday last week, 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 villages in the province, and the fighting has forced nearly 130,000 people from their homes and into government refugee centers.
FLEEING
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.
Despite a government ultimatum to leave, many rebels began building defensive positions in some of the villages.
“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 yesterday.
Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro said that, so far, only one soldier and two MILF fighters were confirmed dead.
Military vice chief of staff Lieutenant General Cardozo Luna said more than 2,000 troops were involved in the operation.
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 had occupied areas around a number of Christian towns in North Cotabato last week after the Supreme Court issued an order to suspend a draft homeland accord between the government and MILF.
30-YEAR CAMPAIGN
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 last month 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 MILF.
The court has asked the government to submit arguments defending the agreement.
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