MANILA — Several government troops as well as members of a Muslim separatist group were killed in one of the heaviest fighting in the southern Philippines in recent months, officials and rebel leaders said on Wednesday.
The number of fatalities and the injured was still not clear as of Wednesday afternoon but the army said at least eight marines were killed — four of them were later found beheaded — while nine were injured and at least six others were missing during heavy fighting late Tuesday in Tipo-tipo, a hinterland town of Basilan island.
Officials of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, the country’s largest Islamic separatist group, said their fighters killed 23 marines and recovered several high-powered weapons and ammunitions. The front’s spokesman, Abu Majid, said 10 marines were beheaded by “unidentified groups” after the fighting. Majid said four rebels were killed and seven were injured.
Discrepancies in casualty counts are common in the Philippines. An army official, Major Gen. Ben Mohammad Dolorfino, said the Abu Sayyaf beheaded the marines in retaliation for the death earlier of the son of one of the group’s leaders. “They got angry, that’s why they decapitated the Marines,” Dolorfino said. The front denied that its forces were responsible for the beheading but said it would investigate.
The army said the marines were patrolling Tipo-tipo to verify reports that Giancarlo Bossi, an Italian priest who was kidnapped last month, had been taken to Basilan, the lair of the terrorist group Abu Sayyaf which had been blamed for the priest’s abduction.
Marine spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Ariel Caculitan told reporters in Manila that 50 marines and more than 300 rebels fought in Tipo-tipo. “We were totally outnumbered,” he said.
The Moro Islamic Liberation Front, which has been fighting for a separate Islamic state for Filipino Muslims in the south the past three decades, said the violence could have been avoided had the military coordinated with them the troops’ entry to Tipo-tipo, which the rebels consider as part of their territory.
We have all the mechanism in the ceasefire that allows coordination and to prevent this kind of unfortunate incident, said Majid, the front’s spokesman.
The government and the front have been engaged in peace negotiations for years now. A ceasefire agreement is supposedly taking effect, although there had been incidents of violations in the past. The agreement requires both sides to coordinate their movements if one side ventures into an area where the other side is present. Majid said he did not understand why the marines did not notify the front of its operations in Tipo-tipo.
“Our troops thought they were under attack. That’s why they fought back,” said Mohaqher Iqbal, the head of the front’s negotiating panel. “It should have not happened,” he said.
The Philippine government had said that some elements of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front were also working with the Abu Sayyaf and the Jemaah Islamiyah, two groups that had been blamed for several of the most horrific terrorist attacks in the country since 2001.
The front denied any connection with the Abu Sayyaf and Jemaah Islamiyah although it promised to purge its ranks of extremists. (davaotoday.com)
Peace Process
