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NINE soldiers and one civilian were killed in what
the military described as a “shooting incident” inside an Army
outpost in a remote village in Sulu early Saturday.
Reports reaching Camp Aguinaldo
said the incident took place about 2:30 a.m. at the command post of
the 35th Infantry Battalion in Barangay Silangkan in Parang town.
The Army spokesman, Lt. Col.
Ernesto Torres Jr., said the soldiers that were killed all belonged
to the battalion’s Charlie company.
Torres said another soldier and a
woman, said to be wife of one of one of fatalities, were wounded in
the incident.
Torres quickly brushed off
earlier reports that one of the soldiers had gone on a shooting
rampage.
“What we can report here is
that there was an incident where 10 people were killed and two
others were wounded. We can confirm only at that incident,” he
said in a radio interview.
“One angle is that this
unidentified civilian that was killed in the area has something to
do [over the incident]. As of the moment, this is still being
investigated,” he said.
The names of the dead soldiers
were withheld pending notification of their relatives. The identity
of the lone civilian casualty is still being established, Torres
said.
He added that the 35th IB
Commander, Lt. Colonel Jose Faustino had already been in the outpost
to investigate.
Torres said Charlie company would
be pulled out from Silangkan and redeployed to battalion
headquarters in Bud Datu town while an investigation is being made.
The soldiers were part of the
nearly 10,000 troops that have been deployed in Sulu since August
last year in an offensive to capture top local and foreign Islamic
militants that have reportedly been hiding in the jungles of Sulu.
 --Anthony
Vargas
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