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MANILA » A deadly three-week standoff between government troops and Muslim rebels who held nearly 200 people hostage in the southern Philippines has ended with all of the remaining captives safe, officials said Saturday More than 200 people were killed in the clashes, including 183 rebels, 23 soldiers and police, and 12 civilians. It was in one of the bloodiest and longest-running attacks by a Muslim group in the southern Philippines, the scene of a decades-long Muslim rebellion for self-rule in the largely Roman Catholic country. Gazmin said 195 hostages had either been rescued, managed to escape or were freed....

Excerpt - MANILA, Feb 3 (Reuters) - Muslim separatists in the southern Philippines are holding Manila's military chief, the head of the government's truce panel, a colonel and an undetermined number of soldiers hostage, senior military sources said on Saturday. Members of the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) were refusing to let Brigadier-General Ben Dolorfino, the commander of military forces in the capital, and Ramon Santos, government undersecretary for the peace process with the MNLF, leave their camp until their jailed founder was released. Local media reported that more than 20 senior military, defence and government officials were being held...

(2ND UPDATE) FOURTEEN soldiers have been killed while over a dozen have been wounded after followers of detained former rebel leader Nur Misuari attacked several military installations in Sulu island on Monday, a military spokesman said. Thirteen soldiers were killed after Misuari's followers and Abu Sayyaf members ambushed Marine Battalion Landing Team 5 in barangay (village) Pansul in Patikul town at 1:35 p.m., Lieutenant Colonel Buenaventura Pascual said. Fourteen other soldiers were wounded in the assault on the military truck, Pascual said. "Pursuit operations are ongoing," the military spokesman said, adding that they had yet to account for rebel casualties....

TRIPOLI, Libya (AP) - At least five factions of the oldest Muslim rebel movement in the Philippines opened talks on reunification Saturday, seeking to strengthen the 1996 peace agreement with the Philippine government, Libyan officials said. A Philippine government representative and the governor of the southern Philippine province of Mindanao were attending the talks, scheduled to last two days, the officials said. The Moro National Liberation Front fought for Muslim self-rule in the southern Philippines in the 1970s. With the help of Libyan mediation, it signed a peace deal with the government in 1996 that granted the region limited autonomy....