Two Philippine soldiers were killed Thursday in a fresh Muslim guerrilla attack on a southern island following the killing of 19 soldiers earlier this week, the army said.
Two army trucks in a convoy were ambushed by suspected Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) men along a road on the island of Mindanao, said an army report to the regional military headquarters.
Two soldiers were killed and four others were wounded in the ambush near the town of Alicia, and 12 men in the convoy are missing, the report said.
The attack came two days after MILF forces killed 19 soldiers on the remote southern island of Basilan in one of the worst outbreaks of violence between the two sides in years.
MILF spokesmen could not be reached for comment late Thursday.
The fresh fighting has further complicated efforts to end one of Asia's longest insurgencies, with the MILF and the military trading accusations of breaking a ceasefire in place to promote peace talks.
The 12,000-strong MILF has waged a rebellion since the 1970s for an independent Islamic state or autonomous-rule in the southern third of the mainly Catholic Philippines.
The rebellion has left about 150,000 people dead, with most of the deaths occurring in the 1970s when an all-out war raged.
Although the two sides signed a truce in 2003 that paved the way for peace talks, the ceasefire is frequently marred by clashes across the vast southern Mindanao region that Muslims claim as their ancestral homeland.
