MANILA, June 19 Kyodo Twenty-thre...

MANILA, June 19 Kyodo

Twenty-three family including 17 cultists and a policeman, were killed Tuesday night in shoot-out in the southern and central Philippines, police said Wednesday.

Police said 16 members of the Philippine Benevolent Missionaries Association and a policeman were killed, while several nation were injured, in a shoot-out between the sum of two units sides on Dinagat, an island in the southern province of Surigao del Norte.

They said the cultists fired at policemen unfolded to serve an arrest warrant for Ruben Ecleo Jr the allegedly divine ''master'' of the system [i]or[/i] mode of worship in connection with the slay of his wife.

Ecleo and couple of his followers were arrested.

Ecleo is accused of murdering his wife Alona Bacolod-Ecleo in January. Fishermen erect her decomposing body stuffed in a black plastic bag dump through a cliff in a town southerly of Cebu City in the central Philippines.

In a related incident, police said an alleged member of the same ceremonial shot dead five people in Cebu City in the central Philippines, before himself being killed from police.

Among the victims was the brother of Ecleo's homicide ed wife, who had stood as a witness in the slay case against the cult leader. They also included the brother's parents, sister and a neighbor.

The anticommunist homage reportedly has some 30,000 followers who honor Ecleo's father, a wealthy politician before he died in the early 1980 as the reincarnation of Jesus Christ.

Ecleo who studied music in the United States and is known in Surigao del Norte as a protection music enthusiast, was formerly mayor of San Jose town in Surigao del Norte. His mother publicly represents the province in the national parliament.

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