Two Philippine Troops Killed in Clash with Muslim Rebels

Two Philippines soldiers and an unknown number of guerrillas opposed to the government's peace deal with the country's largest Muslim rebel group were killed in a clash Thursday, the military said.

Fighting broke out in the south a day after President Benigno Aquino asked Congress to pass a Muslim autonomy law for the region, a key step to ending a decades-old rebellion that has claimed tens of thousands of lives.

About 20 BIFF rebels opened fire on a military detachment late Wednesday, then attacked an army unit sent out to confront them early Thursday, said Major-General Edmundo Pangilinan, an army commander on the major southern island of Mindanao where the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF) operates.

The rebels killed two soldiers and wounded six others, he told reporters by telephone.

He said residents recounted to the military seeing up to 10 rebels dead in Thursday's two-hour gunbattle, though no guerrilla bodies were recovered.

If the death toll is accurate, it would be the deadliest clash in Mindanao involving the BIFF since July, when 17 rebels and a soldier were killed in a single day.

The BIFF split from the main Muslim rebel group, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), in 2008.

The 10,000-strong MILF signed a peace agreement with the Aquino government in March with the aim of creating an autonomous region for Muslim-dominated areas in the south of the largely Catholic nation.

However the BIFF, which is believed to have just a few hundred fighters, has rejected the agreement and vowed to fight on for a separate Islamic state in the southern Philippines.

Last month the BIFF pledged allegiance to the Islamic State, extremist jihadists who now control large swathes of Iraq and Syria.

The MILF has condemned the  IS actions and vowed to stop the spread of the group's "virus" into the Southeast Asian nation.