Philippine army says seizes Islamic militant base

About 300 Philippine soldiers, backed by heavy artillery and mortar shelling, overran a base of Islamic militants deep in the hills of a remote southern island on Wednesday, a senior general said.

Brigadier-General Juancho Sabban, commander of marines and elite army soldiers on the island of Jolo, said at least 200 members of the Abu Sayyaf group of militants, and about one dozen Indonesian jihadists from Jemaah Islamiah (JI), were in the camp at the time.

"We were able to capture the camp," Sabban told reporters. "I think they were planning to do something big so we stopped them by launching a pre-emptive strike, using our artillery and our ground forces," he said, adding that the army had acted based on intelligence reports.

Sabban said the rebels suffered heavy losses in the fighting that started just after midnight ( 5 p.m. British time on Tuesday), but had no further details. Many of them managed to escape, other officials said.

He said the troops did not suffer any casualties in the attack on the camp, which also included a bomb-making factory.

The operations did not affect nearby local communities, he said, although there were some reports that civilians had fled their farms and homes to avoid getting caught in the crossfire.

The Abu Sayyaf is a small but deadly Muslim militant group operating in the south of the largely Roman Catholic Philippines. It was blamed for the country's worst terrorist attack, the bombing of a ferry near Manila Bay in 2004, which killed more than 100 people.

Key members of the JI, including some wanted for the 2002 Bali bombing that killed 202 people, are believed to have fled to the Philippines' southern islands in 2003 and taken refuge with the Abu Sayyaf.

While mainstream Muslim rebel groups in the Philippines have signed truces with Manila and are negotiating for some measure of self-rule in the south, the Abu Sayyaf continues to bomb civilian targets and uses kidnap-for-ransom to fund its activities.

Since 2002, Washington has been helping its former colony hunt down members of the Abu Sayyaf and the JI, a regional terrorist network, through training and equipment.

About 50 U.S. soldiers are on Jolo to help the Philippine military but are forbidden from taking part in active operations.