At least 15 people, including children, were killed in a gunbattle between feuding Muslim families in the troubled southern island of Mindanao last night.
Lieutenant-General Alberto Braganza said soldiers had been sent to a coastal village in Alicia town in Zamboanga Sibugay province to defuse tensions after two warring families exchanged automatic gunfire on Monday night.
"We have to prevent the incident from getting out of control and affecting other people in the community," said Lieut Gen Braganza.
"We are not taking any side in the fighting. Our mission was to restore order." About 25 people were also wounded in the fighting, he said.
Roseller Arrieta, the provincial police chief, said 11 people died in the village and four at a nearby hospital. "Most of the fatalities were children and women caught in the crossfire," he told reporters.
He said the bloody clan war over control of a local seaweed farm had killed nearly 40 people since last month.
Clan wars, known locally as "rido", are common in communities in the southern Philippines, and analysts say they pose a major threat to a fragile two-year truce between the government and Muslim separatist rebels.
Studies funded by the Asia Foundation and the US Agency for International Development found there had been more than 1,200 clan feuds in Mindanao since the 1930s, killing nearly 5,000 people and displacing tens of thousands.