MILF rebels kill three as RP deploys troops south

MILF rebels kill three as RP deploys troops south

Agencies, Cotabato/Manila

Muslim guerrillas killed three Philippine soldiers in an ambush
on Monday as thousands of troops massed within sight of rebel
positions to head off sympathy attacks if the United States goes
to war with Iraq, officials said.

The ambush of the soldiers by the Moro Islamic Liberation
Front (MILF) and the tense standoff on the southern island of
Mindanao came as Manila linked an Iraqi diplomat to another
Muslim group blamed for a bomb blast in October that killed a
U.S. soldier and two Filipinos.

Eight other members of an army engineering unit were wounded
when they were set upon during a morning jog by fighters from the
MILF, which the military has linked to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda
network.

But government peace negotiators said later they believed the
situation had eased after talks between the two sides.

"The situation has been clarified on the ground," presidential
adviser for peace Eduardo Ermita told Reuters. "The skirmishes
that had been feared may no longer take place. I think the
situation has been defused."

The ambush in southern Maguindanao province occurred 60 km
northwest of a marshy area near where 1,000 heavily armed MILF
rebels and allied groups had massed in a bold challenge to the
military, officials said.

At least 17,000 villagers fled their homes around the town of
Pikit, about 800 km south of the capital, Manila, to avoid being
caught in any crossfire between the rebels and more than 3,000
troops backed by artillery and helicopter gun ships.

"We are going to assault the area," Defense Secretary Angelo
Reyes told reporters in Manila. "We cannot allow lawless elements
to claim that they have camps." He was referring to an old rebel
base in the area.

The MILF, the country's largest militant group, says it has a
force of 12,000 in the area but the military says the number of
heavily armed rebels is about a tenth that size.

The MILF has been fighting for a Muslim state in the southern
Philippines for three decades and intelligence agencies have
accused it of operating training camps in the mid-1980s for
fighters from Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.

The military said some 3,000 troops from three infantry
divisions -- plus a brigade of Marines, 20 tanks, six fighter
jets and six helicopter gun ships -- were ready for the assault.

"The situation is very tense in the area now," one resident
told Reuters.

Gazzali Jaafar, a spokesman for the MILF, accused the army of
violating a ceasefire agreement.

"We find it difficult but we are determined to push through
with peace negotiations," he said in a radio interview.
The government and the MILF have been holding stop-start talks
for years as part of efforts to end conflicts with various Muslim
militant groups that have killed more than 120,000 people, mostly
civilians, since 1972.

The Philippines is battling two other rebel groups in the
south.

Philippine troops at the weekend killed eight Muslim
guerrillas from Abu Sayyaf, another group that intelligence
agencies have linked to al Qaeda. The group is holding seven
Indonesian and Filipino hostages.

In Manila, a military spokesman dismissed warnings by
communist rebels (NPA) that they would step up their offensive if
the United States attacked Iraq. The NPA and Abu Sayyaf are on a
U.S. blacklist of terrorist groups.

Meanwhile, Philippine Foreign Secretary Blas Ople on Monday
linked a senior Iraqi diplomat in Manila to a deadly bomb attack
by the Abu Sayyaf rebels that killed an American serviceman and
injured another in the south last year.