Documents, photos seized at MILF base unveil terror plans

Documents, photos seized at MILF base unveil terror plans

Froilan Gallardo, Associated Press, Pikit, Philippines

Government troops seized boxes of documents on Sunday in the
house of a Moro separatist leader in the southern Philippines,
including manuals on assassination, ambush and bombing
techniques, military officials said.

Pictures of rifle-clad children being trained as Moro Islamic
Liberation Front (MILF) guerrillas also were found in the house,
which allegedly was the command post of MILF chairman Hashim
Salamat in a sprawling rebel lair that has been captured in a
weeklong military offensive, the officials said.

"It means they're training terrorists," army Maj. Gen.
Generoso Senga told reporters. "They're training even child
combatants."

With past police and military intelligence reports linking the
MILF to the al-Qaeda terrorist network, the military will examine
the seized documents for evidence of such a connection, army
spokesman Maj. Julieto Ando said.

The abandoned building and three nearby huts apparently used
as Muslim prayer areas were in a heavily fortified compound that
was ringed by deep trenches and concrete fence with barbed wire
and shielded from the air and ground by banana and coconut trees.

The area is in the so-called Buliok complex in a vast, marshy
boundary straddling the southern provinces of North Cotabato and
Maguindanao, which the military said it captured late last week
in a major offensive involving thousands of soldiers and marines.

Armed forces spokesman Col. Essel Soriano said 157 rebels,
five soldiers and one government militiaman were killed in the
fighting. Rebel spokesman Eid Kabalu claimed only 40 guerrillas
were killed, including 35 on Thursday in a clash in Sultan
Kudarat province's Tinumiges village in the single biggest
guerrilla loss in recent memory. Military deaths and injuries are
now "by the hundreds," Kabalu claimed.

Neither count could be independently confirmed.

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, whose administration is
working to resume Malaysian-brokered peace talks with the rebels,
last week ordered the offensive on Buliok, stressing it was not
directed against the MILF but against criminals and outlaws who
have allegedly taken refuge in MILF areas -- including those from
the Pentagon, a notorious kidnap gang on a U.S. terrorist list.

The rebels, who have been waging a bloody separatist war in
the country's poor south, deny the claims, saying the offensive
is aimed at pressuring them into accepting a peace deal.

Kabalu denied that Salamat maintained a house or command post
in Buliok and added the military may have found a Muslim prayer
center. The rebel documents were "planted" by military officials
to justify the military assaults, which were actually a violation
of a cease-fire agreement, he said.

"This is a psychological, propaganda operation by the
military," Kabalu told The Associated Press by telephone. "If we
abandon an area, do you think we would leave any delicate
documents there?"

He acknowledged many MILF guerrillas abandoned their
strongholds in Buliok because of the overwhelming military combat
forces.

"We're natives there and we have a mastery of the terrain," he
said. "We've just maneuvered out to avoid the tanks and planes,
but we're just around running and watching."

The fighting began last Tuesday with a government assault on
the Pikit area in North Cotabato province, about 920 kilometers
(575 miles) southeast of Manila. About 51,000 people have fled
their homes. Four children have died of various illnesses in
evacuation centers, officials said.