Philippine President Benigno Aquino held a surprise meeting in Japan with the country's top Muslim rebel to address growing concerns over delays in implementing a peace deal, their aides said Thursday.

The meeting took place Tuesday on the sidelines of a peace conference in Hiroshima where Aquino and Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) chairman Murad Ebrahim were guests, presidential spokesman Edwin Lacierda said.

Philippine President Benigno Aquino, whose country was brutally invaded by Japan in World War II, said Tuesday he supports Shinzo Abe's plan to expand the scope of his country's armed forces.

The comments, during a one-day trip to Tokyo, highlight the huge shifts in attitude in the region and show how alliances are being forged as Asia adjusts to an increasingly muscular Beijing pressing territorial claims in nearby waters. 

Philippine and U.S. warships are set to kick off joint drills near disputed South China Sea waters next week, a Filipino military spokesman said Friday, amid escalating territorial rows between Beijing and its neighbors.

The drills will be held off the west coast of the Philippines' main island of Luzon, said Lieutenant Rommel Rodriguez, spokesman for Filipino side of the operations.

The Philippines said Thursday it would ask a U.N. tribunal to speed up its appeal to declare China's expansive claims to the South China Sea invalid.

A formal request would be filed seeking a resolution on the case within the year or early 2015, foreign department spokesman Charles Jose said.

The Philippine government on Thursday ordered its nationals in war-torn regions of Iraq to flee the country but said those in Kurdistan could remain.

"Due to the rapidly deteriorating security situation in Iraq," the department raised "Alert Level 4" calling for the mandatory repatriation of Filipinos in areas of Iraq affected by the fighting.

Ten Muslim extremists and seven soldiers were killed on Thursday in one of the bloodiest clashes in the southern Philippines in recent months, the military said.

Soldiers were approaching a known hotbed of the militant Abu Sayyaf group on the strife-torn island of Jolo when the fighting broke out, military statements said.

A Philippine court on Wednesday sentenced 12 Vietnamese men to six months in jail and fined them $100,000 for illegal fishing, the prosecutor in the case said.

The fishermen, who were arrested on March 21 with a boatload of sharks just off the western island of Palawan, pleaded guilty last week, prosecutor Alen Rodriguez told AFP.

Philippine President Benigno Aquino will visit Japan next week, with rows over China's territorial ambitions likely on the agenda, his office said Wednesday.

Aquino will meet Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe during the one-day trip on June 24, in another move to deepen ties as the two nations have endured increasingly hostile disputes with China over rival maritime territorial claims. 

The Philippines on Monday called on nations with overlapping claims in the South China Sea to halt all action that could provoke tensions in the area, amid fears of China's expansionism.

Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario said he backed a U.S. proposal for a fresh regional dialogue that could take place within the year where he hoped to put the moratorium plan formally on the table.

Two men -- a Malaysian and a Filipino -- were abducted Monday off the coast of Borneo island by a pair of sea-borne gunmen, a police official said, despite heavy security in the area after a spate of kidnappings.

"Two armed gunmen abducted two people from an open-sea fish farm. They were taken away in a boat," said Omar Mammah, head of criminal investigations for the Malaysian state of Sabah, told AFP.