Military

DATE=11/07/00

TYPE=CORRESPONDENT REPORT

TITLE=Philippines Prison Raid (L-only)

NUMBER=2-268928

BYLINE=Konrad Muller

DATELINE=Manila

CONTENT=

VOICED AT:

INTRO: In the southern Philippines, Muslim guerrillas have stormed a city jail and freed 65 prisoners, among them a rebel commander. As Konrad Muller reports from Manila, one person died and five were wounded in an assault that occurs during a continuing rebellion on the main southern island of Mindanao.

TEXT: The raid occurred before dawn Monday in the city of General Santos. It involved more than fifty guerrillas from the Moro Islamic Liberation Front the main Muslim separatist

group in the troubled Philippine south.

Bearing rocket propelled grenades, assault rifles, and large hammers, they arrived well prepared at a prison that, before

this morning, had housed 400 inmates.

Police say grenades blew apart a concrete perimeter wall. Cells were smashed open with hammers. Prison guards, numbering about

twenty, did exchange fire with the rebels, but did not deter them.

The operation had a deliberate target, it seems. Police officer Alvin David says among those

freed was Tahir Alonto, a man described as a commander of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front. Several rebels involved in kidnapping operations also were freed. Two other suspected Front members who escaped were linked to a pair of bombings in Mindanao this year that killed five people and wounded scores of others.

The raid is the latest sign the Moro Islamic Liberation Front is far from quashed.

In July, after months of escalating hostilities, President Joseph Estrada approved an assault on the separatists' base camp. The Front, then estimated to have some 15 thousand regulars, quickly abandoned the site and has since resorted to guerrilla warfare in often rough terrain. Manila has not been able to restart peace talks.

A smaller, more radical Muslim separatist group, the Abu Sayyaf, has been at the center of a prolonged hostage crisis, that started when 21 people, mainly foreigners, were abducted

from a Malaysian diving resort in April. They still hold one Filipino and one American. (Signed)

NEB/KM/PLM