15 dead as Islamic militants attack in Philippines

Thirteen assailants and two soldiers were killed when a little-known Islamic militant group attacked a military outpost in the lawless southern Philippines on Sunday, the army said. About 50 men attacked the Marine outpost on the strife-torn island of Jolo before dawn but the troops fought back, driving them off, said regional military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Randolph Cabangbang. He said two soldiers were killed in the gun battle, and the military had recovered 13 of the assailants' bodies along with seven of their firearms. Cabangbang identified the attackers as members of a group known as the "Awiiyah" or "Awliyah", which he described as a "radical" organisation with links to the feared Abu Sayyaf. He said the group was composed of teenagers and young men, and acted as an "auxiliary" to the Abu Sayyaf, which was founded with the help of the Al-Qaeda network in the 1990s and is listed by the United States as a terrorist group. The Abu Sayyaf is accused of carrying out the worst terrorist attacks in recent Philippine history, including a ferry bombing that killed more than 100 people in 2004. US special forces have been stationed in the southern Philippines for a decade to help train the military in combating the Abu Sayyaf, although they are not allowed to have a combat role. But Jolo and other parts of the southern Philippines are home to a wide range of armed Muslim groups, many of which work together or help each other and are regularly involved in kidnappings, drugs and other crimes to survive. The Philippines is Asia's Roman Catholic outpost but there are about four million Muslims who live mainly in the south. An insurgency has raged for four decades with Muslims aiming for independence or an autonomous substate in the southern areas they say are their ancestral homelands. The main Muslim rebel group, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), is involved in peace talks with the government and insists it has no ties to radical groups such as the Abu Sayyaf. MILF spokesman Eid Kabalu said he had not heard of the group accused of carrying out Sunday's attack. He said the group may have arisen because of frustration over the drawn out nature of the peace talks, which have gone on for more than a decade and are currently at another impasse. "This is a development which has to be seriously looked into by the government and the MILF," he told AFP. Cabangbang said the gunmen in Sunday's attack had apparently miscalculated the timing of the assault on the military outpost, where between 60 and 90 Marines were stationed. "They probably attacked based on the wrong information. They may have thought the soldiers were still getting up but at that hour, there are already a lot of soldiers who are active," said Cabangbang. Five soldiers were also wounded in the attack and had to be flown to a hospital by helicopter, according to Cabangbang.