PHILIPPINES SENT TROOPS TO SOUTHERN PROVINCE

The Philippines has sent hundreds of extra troops to a southern province after at least 22 journalists and supporters of a candidate for governor were killed in what the president's office called the worst political violence in recent history.

• Lieutenant-Colonel Romeo Brawner, a spokesman for the military, said on Tuesday that the army had sent in about 500 more soldiers to Maguindanao province on the island of Mindanao "to go after the criminals".
• Brawner said the troops were under orders to arrest the followers of Andal Ampatuan, the incumbent governor suspected of being behind the mass killing after the abduction of more than 40 journalists and supporters of his rival, Esmael Mangudadatu.
• "We maintain the Ampatuans are the suspects," Brawner told the AFP news agency.
• The military said 22 bodies - most female, some beheaded and mutilated - had been found in a mass grave in a remote mountainous area and the number was likely to rise as soldiers dug further at the site.
• Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, the Philippine president, condemned the violence and ordered her top security officials to "personally oversee military action" against those behind the killings.
• "No effort will be spared to bring justice to the victims and hold the perpetrators accountable to the full limit of the law," she said in a statement. "Civilised society has no place for this kind of violence."
• But Al Jazeera's Marga Ortigas, reporting from the Philippines, said Ampatuan is known to be closely-associated to the government and a close ally of Arroyo so people are watching to see what action the government will take.

Source: The Agencies
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