Manila: Nearly 50 people were killed when a renegade commander of a former Filipino-Muslim rebel group launched an attack in the southern Philippines, a local paper said.

The group had been holding peace talks with the Philippine government since 1997.

43 of those killed were members of the pro-government militia; six were members of the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF). BIFF’s leader, Shams Al Deen, attacked three military detachments in Central Mindanao late Monday, sources from both camps told the Manila Standard on Friday.

The BIFF rebels also seized 13 high-powered firearms from the militias, Standard quoted Shams Al Deen as saying.

The rebels also took several hostages, other reports said, adding that thousands of residents in nearby Kulasi, S.K. Pendatum were displaced because of the clashes.

However, Col. Dixon Hermosa, spokesman of the 6th Infantry Division, told the Standard that clashes did not yet occur at Datu Piang and Sharif Aguak, adding they occurred at President Quirino, Sultan Kudarat and Midsayap, North Cotabato.

Some areas are civilian Christian communities Hermosa added.

BIFF rebels are still in several endangered areas since they are residents there, Hermosa said, adding that reports that the Civilian Volunteers Group, a pro-government militia suffered a large number of fatalities are not true.

Justifying the attacks, Shams Al Deen told the Standard: “It’s a war between Muslim and Christians because they [powerful Christian families] have taken from us our ancestral land [in Mindanao].”

Filipino Muslims were also discriminated upon in Christian schools, Shams Al Deen claimed.

The clashes placed Shams Al Deen, a former MILF commander, at centre stage as the new MILF renegade rebel leader with 2,000 men.

He had allied with Ameril Umbra Kato when the latter founded the BIFF and created a faction of the MILF in 2010, in reaction to the MILF’s continuous pursuit of peace talks with the Philippine government.

Kato, once considered by the military as one of the most wanted MILF renegade rebel leaders, is reportedly ailing.

Nur Misuari, founder of the mainstream Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), called for a meeting in Zamboanga City about the ongoing clashes.

The Philippine government and the MNLF had forged two pro-autonomy peace settlements in Libya in 1978, and in Manila, in 1997. The latter was held after four years of peace talks that began in 1992 and were brokered by Indonesia, a member of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC).

Shams Al Deen has reportedly allied with the MNLF.

Leaders of the MILF, which became a faction of the MNLF in 1978 after the latter had forged a settlement with the Philippine government in 1976, allegedly complained that the Shams Al Deen-initiated clashes have already reached MILF-controlled areas in the southern Philippines.

Meanwhile, the coordinating committees on the cessation of hostilities of both the Philippine government and the MILF have cleared the operations against the BIFF, Mirriam Ferrer, head of the Philippine government’s peace negotiating panel (with the MILF), also told the Standard.

Peace negotiators of the Philippine government and the MILF vowed that the ongoing clashes led by Shams Al Deen against the military should not affect the continuation of their peace talks, said Ferrer. Talks began in 1997 and were scheduled to formally resume in Malaysia in July.

The Philippine government and the MILF are to finalise drafts and agree on proposed power and wealth sharing, contentious components of governance in the proposed expanded autonomous region for Filipino Muslims in the southern Philippines, which would be called Bangsamoro.

It will be larger than the existing Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), which has five provinces and one city as members after an initial referendum for autonomy was held following the creation of the Organic Act in 1989; and a second referendum for autonomy in 2001, after Congress had amended the Organic Act, following a pro-autonomy settlement between the Philippine government and the MNLF in 1996.

The six communities and 800 Muslim-dominated villages near the ARMM that voted to be part of the ARMM in 2001 were proposed, during the Philippine government and MILF peace talks, to be part of Bangsamoro, the expanded autonomous area for Filipino Muslims in the south.

ARMM is currently composed of the provinces of Basilan, Lanao del Sur, Maguindanao, Sulu, Tawi-Tawi, and the city of Marawi.