By Prensa Latina,
Manila : Strong clashes between the Philippine Army and rebel troops reverted the peace perspectives this weekend, while press media reported at least 55 dead people in those clashes.
Battles in Datu Piand, Datu Saidi Ampatuanm, province of Mquindanao, in Midsayap and the north of Cotabato, left a remnant of more than 50 dead people between soldiers and members of the Moorish Islamic Liberation Front.
Spokesmen from the Philippine Armed Forces said 100 rebels died in the last four days.
The confrontations have displaced 240,000 people since combats were restarted two weeks ago, said the National Disaster Coordinating Council in a report Monday.
MILF denied those losses, and said that only in the town of Sarangani, 13 soldiers had died.
The rebels relaunched their attacks, after the signing of a peace agreement with the government of Gloria Arroyo negotiated in the last two years was aborted.
More than 700 towns in the island of Mindanao were getting an autonomous state with this agreement.
This provoked an immediate reaction of the Christian population, opposed to the creation of a judicial entity that would cover the ancestral domains of the Muslim population, nearly 5 percent of the 91 million inhabitants in the Philippines.
The Supreme Court stopped the signing of the agreement memorandum scheduled for August 5, after several legislators and politicians sent separate applications so that the local Executive made all the terms of the agreement public.
According to Mohagher Iqbal, MILF negotiator of the agreement, a civil war can start in Mindanao if the current crashes do not come to an end.
He criticized those whom he called “hawks” of the cabinet of President Gloria Arroyo and opposed Christian politicians for their support to the creation of a Muslim homeland in that southern region of the archipelago.
Lieutenant Colonel Julieto Ando, of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division, stated that the attack of the government troops would not stop until the capture of the MILF leaders Ameril Kato and Abdurahman Macapaar.
Ando made these two MILF leaders responsible for the recent attacks in several counties and the death of dozens of people, mostly civilians.