Six villagers, including three children, were killed in the southern Philippines on Monday when a bomb dropped by a military aircraft hit a pump boat loaded with evacuees, officials said.
"This is a very sad day for the town of Datu Piang," said MusibUy Tan, spokesman for the Datu Piang town, located in the southern province of Maguindanao. All the evacuees from the town were on their way to an evacuation site when the tragedy took place on Monday morning, the Philippine News Agency reported.
Julieto Ando, an official of the Philippine Army, confirmed that there were civilians killed in Monday's bombing as government troops attacked some rogue members of the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), according to the report.
"But we must be tactful in investigating reports of civilians being killed in encounters and in really digging into who could be responsible. We're investigating on that now," said the official.
Earlier, another official said that at least 16 MILF fighters were killed in a military strike on Monday in a remote village named Tee located in the Datu Piang town, Maguindanao. But no civilian fatalities or injuries were reported then.
The firefight broke out amid the government troops' operations in pursuit of Ameril Umbra Kato and Abdullah Macapaar, two MILF commanders whose followers attacked towns and villages last month in the Philippines' southern region of Mindanao, said Marlou Salazar, a field commander of the Philippine Army in charge of the operation.
The attack, including air strikes, was focused on Kato's top lieutenant Wahid Tundok, according to the official.
The offensives came four days after Kato's men snatched 28 sacks of rice from the delivery trucks hired by the United Nation's World Food Program, which were set to be distributed to thousands of internally-displaced families in a town adjacent to Datu Piang.
"The group of Tundok seems to be massing up for another attack on the civilian populace in the area that prompted the military strike," Salazar said.
Salazar said that the firefight erupted when Tundok's band fired high-powered machineguns to the approaching soldiers dispatched to validate the report of their presence in the area.
Government forces started their campaign against the rebels after hundreds of MILF fighters, allegedly led by Kato and Macapaar, attacked some towns and villages in the Philippines' southern region of Mindanao. At least 58 civilians have been killed since the clash broke out on Aug. 10, according to a report released by the government. The military said that more than one hundred rebels have been eliminated in the operations.
The MILF reached a ceasefire with the government in 2003, but skirmishes between the two sides have never stopped since then along with off-and-on peace talks brokered by Malaysia. Violence escalated in Mindanao after the government failed to sign a territorial pact with the separatist group scheduled to have been signed on Aug. 5 in Kuala Lumpur.
More than half a million people have been affected by the military conflict and the International Committee of the Red Cross said earlier that the clash in the southern Philippines has reached its worst point in five years.
Source:Xinhua
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