Moro guerrillas execute five Manobos in Sultan Kudarat attack

COTABATO CITY- Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) rebels summarily executed five Manobo tribesmen and torched their houses in Palembang, Sultan Kudarat the other day, the second rebel attack on a tribal village in Central Mindanao in seven days.

This developed as soldiers unearthed in Matanog, Maguin-danao the skeletal remains of nine Moro guerrillas believed killed by their comrades on suspicions they were military spies.

Capt. Ricardo Ellorda, spokesman of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division, said the rebels also took nine civilian hostages as they fled after the attack on Sitio Batang Bagras in Palembang town.

Early this week, MILF guerrillas attacked a Bilaan community in Maasim, a coastal town in Sarangani not far from Palembang.

The rebels looted and burned a dozen houses.

Ellorda said the MILF might have staged the attacks after the natives ignored its demand for "revolutionary taxes."

Ellorda said the skeletal remains of nine Moro rebels were unearthed in a shallow grave in Barangay Langkong, Matanog, Maguindanao.

He said soldiers were sent to the village to verify reports that land mines, live rockets and improvised bombs were hidden in the jungle, when they stumbled upon the shallow grave.

Village officials told the military that the remains could belong to nine of 36 guerrillas who were executed by their companions on suspicions they spied for the Marines and Army during the clearing of the Secretary Narciso Ramos Highway and the offensive on Camp Abubakar, the MILF’s biggest enclave in Maguindanao, last year.

But Ellorda cited other reports that the nine rebels could have been among those killed during the military offensive on the Ramos Highway.

Meanwhile, MILF and government negotiators may have to focus first on the return of thousands of evacuees to their villages and the drawing up of "new ground rules" to prevent undue clashes between soldiers and Moro combatants in many critical areas, the separatist group said.

Muhaquer Icbal, who chairs the MILF’s information committee, said normalcy in these areas will not just ensure the cordiality of the peace talks, but will also speed up rehabilitation of war-devastated communities.

Icbal said that while the MILF is ready to resume stalled peace talks with the government, its immediate concern is the return of Muslim villagers displaced by the military offensive in Central Mindanao last year.

"After all, the peace negotiations are for these people whose socio-economic development has long been stunted by the continuing rebellion of Muslims to be recognized as a self-governing people," Icbal said in a statement.