Army captures MILF camps

MANILA, Philippines – Two main rebel camps of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) have been overrun in Maguindanao by government troops battling a separatist insurgency, just days after they took another camp in the area, the military said.                      

Lt. Col. Jonathan Ponce, spokesman for the 6th Infantry Division, said they have captured two MILF main camps – Camp Afghan and Camp Badir – and three more of the rebels’ satellite camps.

Camp Afghan, located at Barangay Ahan, Guindulungan, reportedly served as the training facility of fresh MILF recruits. 

The camp, just five kilometers away from the highway is also being used by the MILF to manufacture bombs and firearms.

Camp Badir, on the other hand, is located in Barangay Upper Guindulungan and used by the MILF as their staging point of attacks in lowland communities.

Col. Medardo Geslani, commander of the 601st Brigade said that skirmishes continue between troops and MILF fighters within the Guindulungan-Talayan-Datu Odin Sinuat areas.

The number of dead insurgents also rose to 50 and 20 wounded, since the fighting started Thursday, Ponce said.

“From their side, at least 50 were killed and scores wounded in the operations, as we overran their main camps,” Geslani confirmed.

He said five of his men were also wounded in the fighting.

Intense air assaults backed by artillery fire on the ground led to the capture of the MILF camps near the town of Guindulungan on Sunday.

On Saturday, an MILF training camp also near Guindulungan fell to government troops after days of intense fighting, the military said.

Military reports from the field said the bodies of slain rebels were retrieved from shallow graves dug by the MILF.

There were also foxholes, fortified bunkers and an administration office inside the first camp.

Soldiers also recovered yesterday a dozen more newly assembled improvised bombs from an enclave in Guindulungan which Muslim rebels abandoned Sunday night after three days of military aerial, ground and artillery offensives.

The bombs were fashioned from live mortar projectiles and B-40 anti-tank rockets rigged with battery-operated blasting mechanisms.

Ponce said the explosives were to be used in public places such as markets, bus terminals and even buses.

The Guindulungan bases were believed to be the strongholds of MILF commander Ameril Umbra Kato, one of two senior rebel commanders who broke a five-year ceasefire in August and pillaged several mostly Christian towns and provinces.

More than 300 fighters and civilians were killed in the fighting, and hundreds of thousands displaced.

But MILF spokesman Eid Kabalu dismissed the Army casualty report as mere propaganda saying that their fighters, employing guerrilla tactics, have killed 27 Army troops.

Local officials said the guerrillas occupying the camp have fled to a hinterland area at the border of Guindulungan and South Upi, Maguindanao.

Ponce said hostilities in the towns of Talayan, Guindulungan and surrounding towns have waned as a consequence of the military’s takeover of Camp Bader Sunday.

The attacks came after a court rejected a draft peace accord between the MILF and President Arroyo’s government which had offered autonomous rule to the rebels over large areas in the south.

The 12,000-strong MILF has been waging a separatist rebellion since 1978 to carve out an Islamic state in the southern third of this largely Catholic nation. - With John Unson