Fighting across oil and gas-rich marshlands in the southern Philippines has escalated with members of the country's largest Muslim rebel group reinforcing rogue militants, an army field commander said today.
Troops have been fighting Muslim militants since last August and if reports of regular members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) joining the fighting are confirmed, it would mark a dangerous expansion to the war.
Soldiers have captured at least eight Muslim rebel bases in south, seizing a cache of weapons and explosives and killing nearly 100 rebels in 10 days of fighting, Colonel Medardo Geslani, an army brigade commander, told reporters.
Violence across the marshlands and nearby hills on the southern island of Mindanao has spread in recent weeks and displaced more than 50,000 families, pushing back prospects of peace talks stalled since August 2008.
Col Geslani said troops had recovered dozens of assault rifles, crude bombs and undetermined rounds of ammunition in five of eight rebel bases across Maguindanao province.
He said Muslim rebels from other areas in Maguindanao province have joined the fighting between troops and a rogue faction of MILF.
Col Geslani said 93 militants were killed and dozens wounded since June 4th when troops launched an air and ground assault on key Muslim rebel bases in Maguindanao, a MILF stronghold. "We are in the process of methodically destroying them. We're winning in the war."
Less than a dozen troops were wounded in 10 days of fighting for the control of rebel bases that sit on strategic points that control traffic of people and goods near the marshland area, he added.
Renegade members of the MILF went on the rampage after peace talks between the government and rebels collapsed in August 2008.
Nearly 600 people have been killed since then, many of them civilians caught in the fighting. About 2,000 houses in Muslim communities have been set on fire.
Reuters