Moro rebels get foreign arms funding

Moro rebels get foreign arms funding

PHILIPPINES: Moro rebels blamed for a deadly bomb attack in the southern Philippines last week have been buying arms using foreign funds, the military charged on Thursday.

It said documents recovered from a fallen enclave of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) last month revealed the rebels had made payments for machine guns, explosives, grenades and other battle hardware.

The documents, declassified on Thursday, comprised an arms purchase agreement in 1999 and invoices totaling nearly US$2 million for the weapons, military spokesman Col. Essel Soriano said.

The documents were signed by MILF political adviser Ghazali Jaafar and an alleged North Korean arms dealer named Rim Kyu-do with a Malaysian as witness, he said. --AFP