Clashes cloud Philippine peace hopes in Muslim south

MANILA, March 6 (Reuters) Philippine troops may have killed up to 17 members of the country's largest Muslim rebel group in a prolonged gun battle overnight that could jeopardise plans to revive stalled peace talks between the two sides.

Lieutenant Colonel Jeavy Resureccion said today that two soldiers were killed and four were wounded in fierce fighting with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in two villages in Midsayap, north Cotabato, on the southern island of Mindanao.

''Our troops had recovered piles of bodies near a river bank and had brought them to a fish port in Midsayap,'' Resureccion told reporters, adding the 17 casualties included those who had attacked military positions.

Resureccion, commander of an army battalion in Cotabato, said the fighting started at 1930 IST yesterday and lasted till 0600 am today.

The military said the MILF triggered the confrontation after 300 rebels attacked troop positions.

But Rasid Ladiasan, a spokesman for the MILF's truce panel, said the military appeared to have no intention of abiding by the terms of a shaky 2003 ceasefire that has been strained by intermittent clashes since January.

Last night's battle with the MILF was the bloodiest this year.

''Troops keep on advancing towards the area where our forces repositioned. They push us to the wall with no option left but to fight,'' Ladiasan said in a mobile phone text message.

Hundreds of residents from seven farming villages fled their homes yesterday as both sides traded mortar and howitzer shells and army helicopters, armed with rockets, hovered above ferrying more troops into the area.

Last week, the government of the largely Catholic country said it hoped to resume peace talks with the MILF before congressional elections on May 14 after both sides had already met several times for ''backroom discussions''.

Negotiations to end nearly 40 years of conflict that has killed more than 120,000 people have been stalled since May 2006 over the size and wealth of a proposed ancestral homeland for 3 million Muslims in the south.

Analysts have said a breakthrough before the May polls was unlikely because a peace deal would likely provoke powerful political barons in the south whose support allies of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo were relying on.

REUTERS MS PM1436