Police and troops still have to clear areas of the dangerous leftovers of the fighting, including unexploded bombs and possible booby traps, Gazmin said.

About 10,000 houses were burned by the rebels or destroyed in the fighting, according to a military report.Ĭornered by a far larger number of government troops, the rebels sought help from their comrades from nearby provinces but guerrilla reinforcements were driven back, Gazmin said. The gunbattles, including exchanges of grenade and mortar fire, forced about 130,000 residents - more than 10 percent of the population of the bustling port city - to flee their homes to emergency shelters, including Zamboanga's main sports complex. Gazmin said 195 hostages were rescued, escaped or were freed. We have accomplished the mission,' Gazmin told The Associated Press by telephone from Zamboanga, where he helped oversee a government offensive and hostage rescue mission by about 4,500 government troops and police. More than 200 people were killed in the clashes, including 183 rebels and 23 soldiers and police, in one of the bloodiest and longest-running attacks by a Muslim group in the south, where a Muslim rebellion for self-rule in the largely Roman Catholic country has persisted for decades.

Gazmin said only a handful of Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) rebels remained in hiding and were being hunted by troops in the coastal outskirts of Zamboanga city, about 540 miles south of Manila, adding that authorities were trying to determine if rebel commander Habier Malik, who led the Sept. 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 captives safe, the country's Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin, said Saturday.

The rebel the hostage