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Hundreds of heavily armed police swept into this
village Tuesday to arrest Muslim separatists accused of killing and
beheading Philippine soldiers but the suspects were gone along with
all the residents.
An AFP photographer joined the
300-man task force in this remote southern farming village on
Basilan Island as they tried to serve arrest warrants against three
of the 130 suspects.
The suspects, all alleged Moro
Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) rebels, were accused of killing 14
Marines and beheading 10 of them on July 10. The soldiers had
strayed into an MILF area while searching for a kidnapped Italian
Roman Catholic priest, who has since been freed unharmed elsewhere.
However, nearly 6,000 residents
of Guinanta and three other nearby villages fled after the killings
in fear of being caught up in a military assault, and not one
resident could be found Tuesday.
“We knocked on three houses but
there was nobody there,” said Basilan provincial police chief,
Supt. Macapantar Salik.
“We also went to a suspected
MILF camp nearby, but it was abandoned as well,” he added.
Police officers serving warrants
went to the area amid heavy rain in a convoy of 10 vehicles backed
by an armored troop transport with mounted machineguns. They had to
hike the final 1.5 kilometers (about a mile) because roads did not
reach that far.
Salik told AFP the task force
would visit the villages of the other suspects to try to find and
arrest them.
“If they resist arrest we are
prepared to fight. If need be, we can call on our counterparts in
the armed forces for reinforcements,” the police official added.
President Arroyo had suspended a
planned punitive military operation against the MILF on Basilan to
allow for the arrest of the suspects.
The 12,000-member MILF, which has
been observing a three-year truce with Manila amid efforts to bring
a negotiated end to decades of insurgency in the South, has said its
forces killed the Marines.
But the Muslim separatists have
denied mutilating the bodies of the Marines and rejected a military
demand to turn over those behind the attack.
The action against the MILF was
delayed until Tuesday following a warning by Japan and Canada that
they would halt their aid programs in the South if the fighting
escalated.
Meanwhile, Malaysia on Tuesday
vowed to continue its peace efforts in the troubled South despite a
looming military offensive against Islamic militants.
A Malaysian-led international
monitoring team investigating the bloody ambush of 14 Marines
earlier this month would not be pulled out, Malaysian Foreign
Minister Syed Hamid Albar said.
Albar, who was in Manila for an
Association of South East Asian Nations ministerial summit, said
Kuala Lumpur was trying to break the deadlock in peace talks.
“We are in communication with
the Moro Islamic Liberation Front [MILF] and the Philippine
government to try and get talks started again,” he said during a
press conference.
The talks, which are being
brokered by Malaysia, have been deadlocked since late last year over
territorial issues.
They are now on the verge of
collapse as the Philippines prepares for a major assault on MILF
positions in Basilan to arrest those behind the July 10 attack in
which 10 of the Marines were beheaded.
“We are doing everything
possible. And with a strong commitment from the Philippine
government... that gives us encouragement that it [peace] is
possible,” Albar said.
MILF forces in the South Tuesday
were “on defensive mode” as police backed by troops were sent to
arrest 130 members implicated in the ambush, rebel spokesman Eid
Kabalu told AFP.
About 200 policemen backed by
troops were on their way to serve arrest warrants on the MILF
militants.
“Our forces are on a defensive
mode. They [police] will not be able to get anyone. We told our
forces to exercise maximum restraint, but they will fight back if
attacked,” Kabalu said.
“We want the international
monitoring team led by Malaysia to continue with an investigation of
this incident,” he said, stressing that the fighting was provoked
by troops who illegally entered an MILF camp.
Asked if the MILF had any message
for Albar, he said: “For the sake of resolving the legitimate
problem in the south, we want Malaysia to come in and share their
support for the early resolution of this particular problem.”
Malaysia, an influential member
of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, has been helping to
broker peace talks between Manila and the MILF, which has been
waging a decades old insurgency in the southern Philippines.
--AFP with inputs from Anthony Vargas
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