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Six Mujahideen Killed, Negotiations On Three-Week Hostage Crisis Continue
COTABATO, Philippines, April 11 (AFP) - Filipino troops on Tuesday killed six Muslim fighters as the government fought to stave off chaos in the southern region of Mindanao, hit by a massive power failure blamed by the military on Muslims. Monday's island-wide power outage, which left 16 million people without electricity for several hours, was caused by a Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) attack that damaged the 138-megawatt Agus 2 power plant near the town of Baloi, army Major Johnny Macanas claimed. Government engineers were escorted to the site by a heavily armed military convoy on Tuesday morning to try to restore normal electric power supplies to an area about the size of Portugal after parts of the island made do with emergency power sources overnight. A separate military unit sent to track down Muslims clashed with a 50-member MILF band near Baloi, leaving six Muslims dead and two others wounded, Macanas told reporters. The military sustained no casualties, he claimed. In Manila a spokesman for the National Power Corp. said unspecified gunfire had damaged transmission lines in the area. Southern Philippines military commander Major General Diomedio Villanueva revealed Tuesday that Baloi and the adjacent towns of Munai, Tambo, Matungao and Tangkal had been abandoned by local government officials to Muslim control. "People have fled," Villanueva told reporters. "There is no government in these areas." The towns which fell under Muslim control sit on the banks of the Agus river, whose waters run several hydroelectric plants that supply power to large chunks of Mindanao. Macanas said investigators had yet to establish the extent of the damage and the weapons used by the Muslims, who have previously denied involvement. The 15,000-member MILF has been waging a 21-year campaign to set up a separate Islamic state for the large Muslim minority in the southern third of the largely Roman Catholic Philippine archipelago. The Agus river area has been the scene of fierce fighting between the MILF and government forces since Saturday, when military units were deployed to clear a Muslim training base, Camp Bilal, near Munai. On nearby Basilan island, the government fought a second front of the Islamic rebellion Tuesday as official negotiators wrestled with a three weeks-old hostage crisis. Abu Sayyaf warriors have set a Thursday morning deadline before they start beheading a Roman Catholic priest and eight other male captives who are among a group of teachers and students seized from two Basilan schools last month. Government efforts were complicated by the action of armed vigilantes identified with a local politician. The group snatched 11 relatives of the Abu Sayyaf leaders and managed to swap two of them for two student hostages last week. Suspected vigilantes late Monday snatched an employee of a Basilan auto repair shop run by the father of Abu Sayyaf leader Khadafy Janjalani, police said Tuesday. "I swear to God that if any of them [Abu Sayyaf hostages] are harmed I will kill all members of your family," Basilan provincial governor Wahab Akbar said in a message to Abu Sayyaf spokesman Abu Ahmad aired on local radio in Mindanao. The Abu Sayyafers, believed to number no more than 1,500 fighters, have not made their terms known. But Ahmad has demanded a meeting with a local movie star and convert to Islam, Robin Padilla, as well as full press coverage apparently to exploit the actor's popularity to advertise their cause. President Joseph Estrada, himself a former movie star, has spurned the demand, saying the lives of hostages was "serious stuff," though Padilla has said he is willing to meet the Abu Sayyafers. "Our objective remains the safety and safe release of all the hostages," Estrada's national security adviser Alexander Aguirre said Tuesday, urging the Muslims to not behead anyone.
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