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.