COTABATO (Philippines): Thirteen Muslim rebels have been killed in a two-day military offensive on the southern Philippines island of Mindanao, the army said on Thursday.

Ground attack aircraft and artillery pounded a Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) hideout on a marshy area near Datu Piang after the military was tipped off that senior MILF leader Ameril Umbrakato was in the area, said Colonel Marlo Salazar, the local army commander.

The assault killed 13 guerillas but Umbrakato was not among them, he told reporters. There were no government casualties, said Army spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Felix Brawner.

Umbrakato was among two hardline MILF leaders indicted by state prosecutors for the pillaging of a series of Christian villages across Mindanao in early August in raids that left scores of civilians dead and displaced up to half a million people.—AFP