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Civilians killed in Philippines anti-terror raid
An eight-year-old girl and three men -- one with his hands bound -- were among those killed in a botched anti-terror police operation in the Philippines last weekend, a local official said Saturday
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n eight-year-old girl and three men -- one with his hands bound -- were among those killed in a botched anti-terror police operation in the Philippines last weekend, a local official said Saturday.
Mamasapano town mayor Benzar Ampatuan said residents had told him police tied up the man to stop him tipping off their targets ahead of the pre-dawn raid, in which 44 commandos died in one of the force's bloodiest days in recent years.
A local farmer's daughter and two other men were also found dead in their homes after the fighting, Ampatuan said, the first report of civilian casualties in the bloodbath.
'Their wives said they were hit in the crossfire,' he told AFP, adding that five other residents of the corn-farming region were also wounded.
The government has described last Sunday's clash, which shattered a three-year ceasefire, as a 'misencounter' during a bid by police to arrest two wanted militants who had taken refuge with Moro Islamic Liberation Front fighters.
Forty four police commandos were killed in the assault.
'We have been temporarily set back by the Mamasapano incident,' Miriam Coronel-Ferrer, the government's chief peace negotiator, told a news conference in Kuala Lumpur.
'Please stay the course with us,' she said. 'The other alternative is simple unthinkable ... I don't think we want to go back to the 1970s.'
Government and rebel peace panels met in Malaysia on Friday to sign protocols for the surrender of weapons by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in a bid to underscore their commitment to the peace process, brokered by Kuala Lumpur.
