Philippinres: Forgotten victims of Mindanao Muslim war..

This is from AFP. The AFP use of military and aerial attacks in areas where there are many civilians is bound to produce collateral damage as this article attests as well as destroying property in an area where people possess very little. Some of the MILF commanders have given up entirely on the peace negotiations and are obviously resorting to guerilla warfare.

The forgotten victims of Mindanao's Muslim war
DATU PIANG, Philippines (AFP) - Arbaya Musalip gently cradles her three-day-old daughter swaddled in a piece of old cloth amid the chaos of this filthy evacuation camp in a remote corner of the southern Philippines.
She is waiting for her husband Amil to check on what remains of their tiny village of Dapiawan, days after Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) rebels forced them to flee with only what they could carry of their meager belongings.
The infant, who does not yet have a name, has not been inoculated and has no proper clothes, just the piece of cloth from a nearby pile of relief items.
"We need water, food," Musalip, 25, tells AFP as she swats away flies buzzing near her baby's head.
"It is a very difficult life, I was in labour for nearly two days in this area since we didn't have the money to go to a hospital.
"I just want the war to stop and bring my baby home."
The Musalips left their modest wooden home in Dapiawan's marshlands when fighting between the MILF and the army recently spilled over to their area.
They had initially decided to stay, but when the MILF started harassing civilians, there was no choice but to leave.
She said she walked several kilometres (miles), despite her advanced pregnancy and having two young children in tow.
Hours later, a military airstrike hit a small boat carrying her neighbours who were also fleeing, killing a pregnant woman and five children.
The military apologised for the civilian deaths, but said the attack was justified because their planes were being fired at from the ground.
It claimed 16 rebels were also killed in the devastating airstrike using machine guns and rockets.
"They didn't care even if there were civilians on the ground," says Siti Salipala, a 33-year-old mother of two toddlers.
"The airstrike killed our neighbours, we had to run and seek shelter here," she says, looking around the plaza in the town of Datu Piang now crowded with thousands of war refugees.
They are the forgotten victims of Mindanao's three decades of struggle for self rule in which more than 120,000 people have been killed and between one million and two million made homeless.
Many people have left the trouble spots while others spend their time in relief camps waiting for the day they can return to their homes, or what's left of them.
Dapiawan, once a thriving rural hamlet, is now virtually a ghost town and the only signs of life among the shuttered and padlocked houses are stray cats.
Pockmarked walls, mounds of ash that once were houses, and broken benches and stalls indicate the intensity of the fighting here.
There are no vehicles on the highway that runs through the area, save for the occasional army truck or aid convoy.
The local police say a recent census showed there are 6,329 "heads of families" now staying in the camp, excluding their dependents. With a typical family here consisting of more than eight members, the number of people living here could exceed 50,000.
MILF rebels began stepping up their attacks last month, just after the Supreme Court blocked a proposed deal with the government that would have given them control over a large Muslim autonomous area.
The deal would have paved the way for a final political settlement ending the MILF rebellion that began in the 1970s.
Two senior MILF commanders attacked on different fronts -- taking over dozens of Christian villages and towns and killing more than 50 civilians.
They also torched homes, looted businesses and engaged the army in intense running gun battles.
President Gloria Arroyo responded with a massive military operation, virtually ending any immediate prospects of returning to the peace table.
As the troops advanced and subsequently took over dozens of MILF camps, the rebels splintered into smaller groups and are now engaged in a deadly cat-and-mouse chase with soldiers.
A ranking member of the MILF's inner circle earlier told AFP they were changing tactics to intensified guerrilla warfare, rather than frontal combat.
"We will increasingly hit weak government positions," the rebel said.
The violence has now affected more than half a million people, in what various aid agencies say is fast becoming a humanitarian crisis with no immediate end in sight.
The Red Cross has appealed to its donors for more funds, saying it expected relief operations to continue for the rest of the year, and adding that the situation had "generated very serious humanitarian consequences".
"We are afraid," Salipala says. "But there is nowhere else to run anymore."