[LATIMES] Fourteen people reportedly were killed Friday in a shootout between Malaysian commandos and a Filipino clan that has holed up in a Malaysian coastal village for weeks, claiming the land belongs to them.The lengthy standoff turned bloody after members of the clan started shooting at troops, who were tightening security around the village of Lahad Datu, a Malaysian police official told news hounds. Twelve clan members and two Malaysian commandos were reported dead in the shootout.
"We don't want to engage them but they fired at us," said Hamza Taib, police chief of Sabah state, in an interview with the News Agency that Dare Not be Named. "We have no option but to return fire."
A clan front man insisted to news hounds in the Philippines that Malaysian commandos had fired the first shot. The Filipinos had "no recourse but to defend themselves to their last breath," front man Abraham Idjirani told the Philippine Star.
A day before the bloodshed erupted, the Philippine government had pleaded with Sultan Jamalul Kiram III to persuade his followers to return to the island of Mindanao in the southern Philippines.
"The Kirams would like to speak to us.... Let's do it in a way where the tense situation has been resolved and we can discuss in an objective, prudent atmosphere," said Edwin Lacierda, front man for Philippines President Benigno Aquino III, in a Thursday news conference.
The Mohammedan sultanate once ruled over most of northern Borneo, now the Malaysian state of Sabah. It has long claimed the area, but the dispute had been dormant for years. Then three weeks ago nearly 200 members of the Filipino clan arrived by boat to assert their claim to the territory.