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Philippine forces end standoff with Muslim rebels
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A DEADLY three-week standoff between troops and Muslim rebels who held nearly 200 people hostage in the southern Philippines has ended with all remaining captives safe, officials said yesterday.
Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin said only a handful of Moro National Liberation Front rebels remained in hiding and were being hunted by troops in the coastal outskirts of Zamboanga city.
He said authorities were trying to determine whether rebel commander Habier Malik, who led the September 9 siege, was dead. Gunshots briefly rang out and a fire erupted yesterday.
More than 200 people were killed in the clashes, including 183 rebels, 23 soldiers and police, and 12 civilians. It was in one of the bloodiest and longest-running attacks by a Muslim group in the southern Philippines, the scene of a decades-long Muslim rebellion for self-rule.
“I can say that the crisis is over. We have accomplished the mission,” Gazmin said by telephone from Zamboanga, where he helped oversee a government mission by about 4,500 troops and police backed by tanks, gunboats and helicopters.
Gazmin said 195 hostages were rescued, escaped or were freed. It was unclear whether any of the civilians killed in the standoff were hostages.
About 10,000 houses were burned by the rebels or destroyed in the fighting, according to a military report.
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