Nearly 100 Muslim guerrillas who have held scores of people hostage for a week in Zamboanga City have been killed or captured in an offensive to retake rebel-held coastal communities, officials said Sunday.

Army troops and police special forces have regained rebel-held grounds and are pressing an assault deeper into communities in the coastal outskirts of Zamboanga city, where more than 100 Moro National Liberation Front guerrillas are holding an unspecified number of hostages, military spokesman Lt. Col. Ramon Zagala said.

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Congolese and UN troops have pushed back the M23 rebel group that had been entrenched in the hills above Goma and the rebels no longer pose a threat to the strategically important city in eastern Congo, the UN peacekeeping chief said Thursday.

Herve Ladsous called the military action a “very significant achievement” that inflicted casualties on the M23 and likely led the rebels to resume talks with the government in neighboring Uganda’s capital, Kampala.

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A cease-fire has been forged between the Philippine army and the separatist Moro National Liberation Front, state media reported on Friday, citing Vice President Jejomar Binay.

He made the announcement during an interview.

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Battles spread across Kachin and northern Shan State as the technical advisory teams from KIO and Burmese government prepare for a meeting next week in Myitkyina. A series of intense battles raging across Kachin region between Kachin Independence Army (KIA) and Burmese Army in areas under KIA’s 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th Brigades, except in KIA’s 5th Brigade area around KIO administrative capital Laiza.

A battle took place between KIA’s 12th Battalion troops and Burmese army’s 323rd Light Infantry Battalion (LIB) troops at Nam Hpang Hka Hku near Kawng Ja village in Mansi Township on Sept 11 at 6 am. The two sides encountered again at around 9 am at Lung Bra near Nam Hpang Hka Hku.

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Government forces failed to attack six rebel-occupied Muslim-dominated villages in Zamboanga, southern Philippines.

They, however, succeeded in preventing rebel intrusion in Zamboanga City, now paralysed after Filipino-Muslim rebel leaders renewed an armed struggle, following a founding rebel leader’s claim that government negotiators refused to review the implementation of a pro-autonomy peace accord that their group signed with the Philippine government in 1996.

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Malian soldiers clashed Wednesday with Tuareg rebels near the Mauritanian border, the first fighting to erupt since the two sides signed a peace accord in June. A Malian captain warned the clash could endanger the truce.

The Tuareg rebels have picked up arms against the African state of Mali three times since independence in 1960, but it was only last year that they succeeded in making significant gains. They were temporarily sidelined by radical jihadists operating in the area, though have grown in strength again since French-led forces largely ousted those Islamic militants last winter.

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Five police officers were shot dead in an ambush in Thailand’s insurgency-hit south on Wednesday, officials said, but the government vowed the attack would not derail fragile peace efforts.

The shooting comes a day after two soldiers were killed in an attack at a school in the south by suspected rebels, apparently intent on disrupting the peace talks.

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