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Govt troops capture MILF headquarters

ZAMBOANGA (Philippines): Government forces captured a Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) field headquarters and killed 16 Muslim separatists in fighting around a major guerrilla base in the southern Philippines, the military said on Monday.

Ground troops backed by cannon overran the militant outpost on Saturday after a week of clashes around Camp Omar, one of the biggest bases of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) on southern Mindanao island.

A military spokesman said on Saturday 22 guerrillas had been killed in fighting for the guerrilla outpost. It was not clear if the casualty figures reported on Monday were part of that toll.

The military said it suffered no casualties in the fighting.

MILF spokesman Mohagher Iqbal said on Monday the militants had only 11 dead since the fighting began on February 14 and denied any rebel headquarters had fallen into military hands.

"What they overran was only our defence perimeter," Iqbal told Reuters. "We have several lines of defence and our headquarters is still about six km away."

Iqbal said Camp Omar covered severals mountains. "If they took one hill, we still have many hills." he added.

Soldiers who overran the rebel outpost found scores of bunkers, foxholes and trenches, an MILF hospital, an armoury and a gunmaking shop, a military report said.

A second round of peace talks between the government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) was to have been held on Monday but the MILF postponed the talks in protest against the military operations.

The MILF is fighting for an Islamic state in Mindanao, where the majority of the country's five million Muslim minority live and which Filipino Muslims regard as their ancestral homeland.

More than 120,000 people have died in the separatist rebellion since it began in 1972.-Reuters