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Muslim militants plunder Philippine village: military

Islamic militants have burnt down a village in the southern Philippines in the latest of a series of raids that have displaced about half a million people, the military said yesterday.

Sixteen houses and three government buildings including health care facilities were put to the torch in the village of Dugengen near Mamasapano town on Mindanao island late on Sunday, army spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Romeo Brawner said.

No casualties were reported in the raid.

He said the raiders were led by Basit Usman and Abas Wahab. The US government has a US$50,000 bounty for information leading to the arrest of Usman, who it describes as “a known terrorist with links to Jemaah Islamiyah” and believed to be responsible for deadly bombings in Mindanao in 2006 and implicated in a recent series of bomb attacks.

The military said it considered Usman and Wahab as leaders of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), whose peace talks with Manila collapsed last month after the Supreme Court blocked a draft peace agreement aimed at ending the four decades-old separatist conflict.

The interim court ruling led to a series of deadly MILF raids on a series of Mindanao Christian villages that claimed dozens of lives and forced hundreds of thousands of civilians to flee their homes.

The MILF has disowned Usman and Wahab, but Colonel Julieto Ando, a spokesman for the Army’s 6th Infantry Division based in central Mindanao, said that “as far as the military is concerned, Usman and Wahab are members of the MILF.”

Meanwhile, rescuers scrambled yesterday to reach 13 miners trapped in a gold mine shaft that was flooded by heavy rains dumped by Typhoon Hagupit in the northern Philippines, officials said.

Benguet provincial Governor Nestor Fongwan said he ordered a search for the miners in the Itogon township mine, but that water must be pumped from the flooded shaft before rescuers can search.

The men failed to return home on Monday night, said George Baywong, an official of the Mines and Geosciences Bureau, who is coordinating rescue efforts.

“We don’t know if they are alive or dead,” Baywong said. “We are hoping for the best — that there are air pockets there where they sought refuge.”

Authorities are rushing in high-capacity water pumps, and are studying engineering maps to figure out how to get to the miners, who are believed to be trapped about 120m to 210m below ground, Baywong said.

In nearby Bagiuo city, a 39-year-old woman was killed and her husband and nine-year-old daughter were injured when landslides triggered by heavy rains buried their home. Dozens of smaller landslides in the area damaged at least five houses and several vehicles, disaster relief officials said.
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