Children, villagers slaughtered and homes burned in Zamboanga

Suspected Muslim separatists shot dead 14 villagers, including a baby and several children, in the southern Philippines late on Wednesday.

About 50 armed men ordered people out of their homes, lined them up and shot them. They also wounded four people and torched 10 houses and a community centre in the mountainous village of Poblacion, Kalawit town, in Zamboanga del Norte, 750km southeast of Manila.

Among the dead was six-week-old Benz Congreso. 'The infant was being carried by his mother,' one resident, Alma, 32, told The South China Morning Post yesterday.

Three other children also died: Roldan Akulbe, 10, and his sister Mary Grace, seven; as well as Benz Congreso's 11-year-old sibling Bername, police said.

Alma, a resident of Kalawit, recalled hearing gunfire shattering the evening stillness. Looking out, she saw that the sky was red less than a kilometre away from her home.

'There was gunfire for some minutes and all we could see was this fire,' she said.

Afterwards she learned that a village watchman had alerted police to the presence of many armed men. 'The soldiers arrived quickly,' she said, and 'near a cluster of houses they found many people, mostly males, dead'. Alma said she knew some of the victims.