11 killed, 23 wounded in clan war in Zamboanga Sibugay

First posted 08:02am (Mla time) June 28, 2005
By Julie Alipala
Inquirer News Service, Agence France-Presse



ZAMBOANGA CITY – (2ND UPDATE) Eleven people were confirmed killed in a clan war that erupted in a coastal village in Alicia town, Zamboanga Sibugay province, a military official said Tuesday.
Major General Gabriel Habacon of the Army's 1st infantry division said only one male was among the dead victims. "Most of them are women and children," he said.

Habacon said soldiers who helped in the evacuation of the victims counted 23 injured.

An Agence France-Presse report said three women and eight children were shot dead in the attack on Tubig Sina, a coastal village of palm-roofed huts on Mindanao island some 800 kilometers (500 miles) south of Manila, Senior Superintendent Roseller Arrieta, the police chief of Zamboanga Sibugay, province said.

Twenty-three other people were taken to a nearby hospital, where four died of their wounds, the same Agence France-Presse report said.

The attackers had not been identified and there had been no arrests, said Arrieta.
had monitored a "rido" or blood feud in the village and believe the attackers were motivated by a clan war, Arrieta said in a report to the regional police headquarters here.

The two unidentified families had quarreled over the ownership of a seaweed farm, he said.

The village is made up of Muslims and Christians and the victims were from both religions, he said.

Police officers had been sent to the area.

More than 1,000 incidents related to family feuds have been recorded on Mindanao in the past 75 years, leaving more than 3,000 people dead, according to studies by the US Agency for International Development and the Asia Foundation.

The region is a hotbed of a decades-old Muslim separatist insurgency.

Inquirer Mindanao Bureau