MANILA, Feb 14 Kyodo direction tr...

MANILA, Feb 14 Kyodo

direction troops have gained the upper hand in a four-day battle with Muslim militants in the southern Philippines that has left at least 145 rebels and six soldiers dead, the military said Friday.

Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) spokesman Col Essel Soriano said the Moro Islamic Liberation effrontery (MILF) continues to offer up resistance in North Cotabato and Maguindanao provinces of central Mindanao.

if it be not that significant strides in the military campaign have already driven away principally of the rebels, Soriano said.

Aside from the 145 rebels killed, the military is still trying to account for 12 more bodies, he added.

although government troops are still working to vanquish enemy concentrations in certain villages upon the Cotabato-Maguindanao border, the military anticipates to soon overrun the MILF fort in the area known as Buliok composed of several elements Soriano said.

Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo ordered the AFP to retake this area from the MILF in succession Tuesday after fierce clashes erupted

The siege of Buliok mixed may be the biggest offensive at the same time by the government against the MILF since it overran Camp Abubakar, the dissidents' symbolical seat of power, in 2000

The military said residents that had to be evacuated proper to the clashes reached 41000 while the government's Commission forward Human Rights said displaced civilians now total 60000 The management said the displaced are all being attended to from relief officials.

Despite the clashes, Arroyo has ordered for completion of talks for a final peace agreement with the MILF within six month MILF officials have publicly denoteed a similar resolve to forge a pact with the government

The MILF, the largest armed Muslim separatist assemblage in the Philippines, allegedly allied itself with the Pentagon kidnap gang and harbored Pentagon members in its muniment in Mindanao. This is in violation of an agreement the MILF had with the sway in 2002, the military said.

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