Villagers flee southern Philippine town fearing new rebel clashes

Philippines, Mar 03, 2009

The mayor of a southern Philippine town where Muslim rebels and government security forces have been fighting on and off for months said Tuesday (March 3) that villagers have been fleeing the town amid reports of renewed agitation. Residents of Kalamansig town in Sultan Kudarat province on the southern island of Mindanao began fleeing to neighboring towns late last week amid reports that some Muslim residents had been claiming lands occupied by Christian settlers, the town's mayor told the Inquirer. A spokesperson for the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), the largest Muslim rebel group in the Catholic-majority Philippines which has been vying for an autonomous Muslim homeland for decades, confirmed the land disputes, but said they were personal and not related to organized MILF action, the Inquirer reported. The MILF and the government began peace talks in 2001 and signed a ceasefire in 2004 that largely held until August, when the Supreme Court stopped the signing of an agreement that would have created the homeland, calling it unconstitutional. Break-away factions of the MILF then occupied Christian villages in several western provinces on Mindanao, leading the military to launch an offensive in which more than 200 people were killed and some 600,000 were displaced at the peak of fighting. The violence has mostly subsided, but sporadic fighting continues. In Kalamansig, at least six civilians were killed in December when MILF rebels raided villages and 10 rebels were killed in retaliatory military airstrikes in January, according to the Inquirer. The army said Tuesday that it had deployed additional troops to Kalamansig to ensure security amid residents' fears of more fighting. Meanwhile, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported that three children were killed and five others were wounded, two of them critically, when they unearthed a mortar shell while playing in Buldon, a Mindanao town that has been the site of fierce fighting between the military and Muslim rebels. The incident occurred Tuesday when the children were playing in a rice mill, according to AFP.