Basilan fighting leaves 23 soldiers dead while Palace plans to buy 1 billion jet plane

“How many more wives will lose their husbands, how many more children will
lose their fathers, how many more will be next? How many more soldiers will
sacrifice their lives for a war without end?”
-----quote from a wife who lost her husband

Mrs. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is going to Zamboanga for a command conference. She wanted to know what happened why twenty three soldiers died while scores of others injured when fighting broke out between AFP forces and Bangsamoro rebels in Tipo-Tipo Basilan.

While Arroyo tries to commisserate with the soldiers, a palace spokesperson revealed that the palace intends to buy a billion peso airplane while field soldiers suffer from lack of equipment and ammo.

The AFP blamed the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) when some of them ambushed the reinforcement of those Marines who first attacked the camp of the Abu Sayyaf Group, an international terror group. Eighteen Marines died in that encounter.

Without that ambush, Lt. Col. Romeo Brawner Jr. said, the soldiers would have overwhelmed the 20 or so Abu Sayyaf Group rebels in the area. The AFP is planning to file a complaint before the Committee on the Cessation of Hostilities but Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process Avelino Razon already said that the incident was an "isolated" one and does not affect the proposed peace negotiations between the government and the MILF.

Of the 21 recovered bodies of the rebels, eleven of them were members of the 114th Base Command of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF).

The fighting began when soldiers staged an attack at the camp of the Abu Sayyaf Group in Barangay Silangkum, a known ASG lair. Based on AFP intelligence, the place was a bomb training camp.

Based on accounts, the soldiers were surprised when they spotted ASG members already waiting for them. Fierce close and hand-to-hand fighting began in the morning and lasted up to the wee hours of the night. Reinforcements were sent but these too were ambushed, this time, according to accounts, from combined elements of the MILF and the ASG. When the smoke of the fighting cleared, 23 soldiers lay dead, most with hack wounds and scores injured.

This is the worst war casualty so far sustained by the Philippine military in the fight against Bangsamoro rebels in Mindanao.