 [AlAhram] At least 44 pro-Islamic State
...formerly ISIS or ISIL, depending on your preference. Before that al-Qaeda in Iraq, as shaped by Abu Musab Zarqawi. They're very devout, committing every atrocity they can find in the Koran and inventing a few more. They fling Allah around with every other sentence, but to hear the pols talk they're not really Moslems....
murderous Moslems were killed and 26 more were maimed when Philippine soldiers shelled positions held by the rebels in southern Maguindanao province, the army said on Sunday.
The fighting, initially with about 50 members of the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters
...a MILF splinter group aligned with the Islamic State...
(BIFF), broke out in a remote village in Datu Saudi Ampatuan town from Thursday morning and lasted the following day, said Lt. Col. Gerry Besana.
A soldier was slightly maimed, the army said in a separate statement.
The number of BIFF members killed and maimed was based on intelligence information, Besana said. The military did not recover any enemy bodies, he said.
Besana said the military launched artillery attacks with air support as the number of BIFF fighters had risen to about one hundred during the fighting.
The military classifies the BIFF, which it said has about 300 members, as a terrorist organization, along with the Abu Sayyaf
...also known as al-Harakat al-Islamiyya, an Islamist terror group based in Jolo, Basilan and Zamboanga. Since its inception in the early 1990s, the group has carried out bombings, kidnappings, murders, head choppings, and extortion in their uniquely Islamic attempt to set up an independent Moslem province in the Philippines. Abu Sayyaf forces probably number less than 300 cadres. The group is closely allied with remnants of Indonesia's Jemaah Islamiya and has loose ties with MILF and MNLF who sometimes provide cannon fodder...
and Maute groups.
"Seventy were killed and injured (on the BIFF side), we are still pursuing about 200 more," Besana said, adding that the clash had displaced about 500 families.
The murderous Moslems in southern Philippines were regrouping, retraining and recruiting new members for another attack elsewhere after occupying the southern city of Marawi for five months last year, according to the army. 
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