ZAMBOANGA CITY, 28 November 2006 — Moro Islamic Liberation Front soldiers clashed with government forces after a militia commander allegedly attacked three people, killing a six-year old girl in the southern Philippines, a rebel spokesman said yesterday.
Eid Kabalu said the fighting broke out late Sunday in the farming village of Dapiawan in Datu Piang town, where government militias earlier attacked a Muslim woman, Faiza Adam, and her six-year old daughter.
Prior to the attack, militias also ambushed a car carrying a rebel leader, Ibrahim Kanapia, wounding his baby, in the neighboring village of Matia.
“The attacks were obviously planned and these triggered the fighting,” Kabalu said, adding, Kanapia and Adam are relatives.
He said Kanapia’s group attacked the militias and torched their detachment in Dapiawan village in retaliation for the killing. He said the fighting may have been triggered by clan war between militias and rebels.
The Army’s 6th Infantry Division said five people were wounded in the rebel attack and they also burned and ransacked more than a dozen houses owned by farmers in the village.
It protested the MILF raid on the village, saying, it was a violation of the six-year old truce between the government and the rebel group.
“The attack is a violation of the cease-fire agreement. We have submitted to the government peace panel our reports about this incident,” an army spokesman Lt. Col. Julieto Ando said in a separate interview.
He said the Malaysia-led truce observers should investigate the rebel attack.
Manila opened up peace talks in 2001 with the MILF, the largest Muslim rebel group fighting for independence in the southern Philippines.
Malaysia is brokering peace talks between the Filipino government and the MILF, but negotiations ended in September in Kuala Lumpur with both sides failing to sign any agreement on the most contentious issue — ancestral domain — which refers to the rebel demand for territory that will constitute a Muslim homeland.
