| Submit your comments on this article |
| Southeast Asia |
| Renewed fighting in Jolo leaves 3 dead |
| 2005-02-14 |
| Fresh fighting broke out between troops and Muslim rebels on the remote southern island of Jolo on Sunday, the seventh day of a military offensive against militants who have vowed to fight to the last man. The military said three soldiers were killed and 13 were wounded when troops caught up with fleeing rebels in the island's interior on Sunday. It said the rebels suffered an undetermined number of casualties in air strikes and artillery fire. "There's heavy fighting going on in Panamao and Luuk areas," Lieutenant-General Alberto Braganza, the most senior commander in the southern Philippines, told reporters. "They are taking a last stand in the mountains." The military said on Friday about 60 rebels had been killed in clashes since Monday. It lost 30 soldiers, including a battalion commander hit by rebel mortar fire on an army base. More than 15,000 civilians have poured into Jolo town, on the west coast of the island of the same name, to escape fighting in mountain villages. Local officials renewed appeals for a ceasefire, saying food, medicines and blankets were running low despite government relief efforts. "They do not like to surrender, they will fight to the death," said Absalom Cerveza, an ally of jailed separatist leader Nur Misuari and a member of the rebel panel that negotiated a peace deal with the government in September 1996. He said he had talked to rebel leaders on Friday, telling reporters the fighters were "in high spirits and far from being crushed". Braganza said an elite team of U.S.-trained counter-terrorist troops was flown to the frontlines on Sunday to reinforce nearly 4,000 soldiers fighting about 800 militants from the al Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf group and rogue members of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) since a rebel ambush on Monday. After the MNLF signed the peace deal brokered by Indonesia in 1996, some disaffected followers of Misuari formed alliances with Abu Sayyaf. While the clashes on Jolo are the bloodiest since 2001, when 500 people were killed in a failed uprising led by Misuari, they are unlikely to affect peace talks with the larger Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), which broke from the MNLF in 1978. Talks with the MILF, brokered by Malaysia, are due to resume next month in Kuala Lumpur. No organised military campaign has ever been lastingly successful on Jolo island, dating back to the 16th century when Spain colonised the archipelago. The U.S. military also failed to contain local warriors on Jolo at the turn of the 20th century, at the start of the American occupation of the Philippines. The Philippine military has also launched campaigns on Jolo after high-profile kidnappings by the Abu Sayyaf, but has not achieved much. The rebels have control of the terrain and wide support from the local population. It is also easy for them to disappear in the jungles or melt among people in towns, and re-emerge at a time and place of their choosing. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |