COTABATO CITY, Philippines, 28 Sept. — Fighting between government troops and units of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in the southern Philippines have subsided yesterday with the separatists claiming they have given their foes a beating.
MILF spokesman Eid Kabalu said their defenders have inflicted about a dozen casualties and damaged a Simba armored personnel carrier of the assaulting troops of the Philippine Army’s 37th and 7th Infantry Battalions.
Kabalu did not mention any casualty on their side although the military claimed one MILF fighter was killed and two other rebels were injured. The military also did not mention any casualty on their side.
As infantry soldiers advanced, army artillery shelled MILF positions in Barangay Tatapan while attack helicopters launched air attacks.
Brig. Gen. Generoso Senga, chief of the army’s 6th Infantry Division operating in the conflict area, said they launched air and ground assaults on the MILF positions following pleas from villagers.
“Because of the large number of MILF fighters, we had to use artillery,” he said.
Hundreds of villagers have been evacuated from the areas where the clash occurred, relief officials said.
Kabalu said they have counted about 120 rounds of howitzer and mortar bombs dropped on their position, plus rockets fired by attack helicopters.
But it was the attacking force that had suffered most, he said, quoting a Commander Ameril as saying some of the army soldiers were “searching for some missing companions who failed to show up as the exchanges of gunfire subsided…”
“(Commander Ameril) believes this was this reason why the military had to apply the so called ‘planting rice’ strategy in bombarding the area because there are really a number of army combatants who cannot be accounted until the two forces were separated by darkness,” Kabalu added.
He said the MILF would raise the issue of the military attacks to an independent peace panel monitoring the cease-fire. “Yesterday’s incident is no doubt a clear sample of a blatant disregard by some units of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) of the existing cease-fire agreement signed between the GRP (Philippine government) and MILF in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on August 7, 2001,” Kabalu said in a press statement.
He said there was no amount of explanation that could justify the AFP’s action since there was no previous skirmishes or incident that could sparked the military’s assault.
In a radio interview yesterday afternoon, he assured the public that the MILF “will not make any retaliatory move” in keeping with their commitment to peace.
