Air strikes launched vs fleeing MILF rebs in Maguindanao

MANILA, Philippines - Explosions ripped a forested area in the southern Philippine province of Maguindanao on Sunday as the military continued its pursuit for the more or less a hundred Moro rebels that fled from a government operation last Saturday. Lt. Col. Jonathan Ponce, spokesman of the Army’s 6th Infantry Division, said two SF-260 Marchetti aircraft delivered rocket fires twice at “fixed targets" in the outskirts of Guindulungan town in the said province. “We used our Marchetti aircraft. We used rockets for fixed targets," he said. The official said the first aircraft went on the sortie before 12 noon while the other went on the mission hours later. There were no immediate reports of rebel casualties from the air strikes. “There is no report yet (from the ground troops). But we have sorties like that, the minimum will be injuries because our rockets are very accurate once the coordinates are pinpointed," Ponce said. The troops were going after members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front’s (MILF) 105th Base Command, which had been responsible for the attacks on civilian targets in Central Mindanao last year. The military last Saturday claimed at least 30 MILF members were killed after several days of spontaneous fighting at the village of Muti in Guindulungan. The MILF, through its spokesman Eid Kabalu, denied the number of fatalities, but the military said the number was based on actual body counts. Kabalu, in an interview over radio dzBB, said only nine MILF fighters were killed, while the military suffered 27 fatalities. Ponce dismissed this claim as a product of Kabalu’s “imagination." - GMANews.TV