Manila: Twelve people, including three members of a mainstream Filipino-Muslim rebel group who fought with government soldiers, died in a clash between government forces and self-styled militants in the southern Philippines, the military said.

The bodies of three missing members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) were not yet found after a mop-up operation. They fought with government soldiers who clashed with members of the Al Qaida-linked Abu Sayyaf Group at the boundary of Tipo-Tipo and Unkaya Pukan towns on Basilan Island on Friday, Philippine Army’s regional spokesman Captain Jefferson Mamauag said in a final report of the incident, which reached Manila’s military headquarters.

Ghazali Jaafar, vice-chair of the MILF which forged a pro-autonomy political settlement with the Philippine government last month, did not confirm the military report.

Earlier, seven Abu Sayyaf members and two government soldiers were initially killed when the two parties clashed in Tipo-Tipo and Unkaya towns on Friday morning, said Capt Mamauag.

Three of the slain Abu Sayyaf members were part of the faction led by Hamza Zapanton of Basilan; four of them were members of the faction led by Puruji Indama. Government soldiers are still looking for the burial sites of the slain Abu Sayyaf members, said Mamauag.

About 28 soldiers and an undetermined number of Abu Sayyaf members were wounded in the clash, said Mamauag.

Attacks on Abu Sayyaf lairs were not connected with the kidnapping of a Malaysian tourist and a Filipina receptionist from a diving resort in Malaysia on April 2, explained Mamauag, adding the military operation targeted Abu Sayyaf factions led by Sapanton, Indama and Isnilon Hapilon.

Indama, known for kidnapping and beheading foreigners, has a bounty of 3.3 million pesos (Dh275,000) on his head. The US State Department has set a $5 million bounty (Dh18.75 million) for Hapilon’s arrest.

Hapilon allegedly participated in the kidnapping of three Americans, including a Christian missionary couple, and 18 Filipinos and Chinese tourists from Dos Palmas Hotel in Palawan, southwestern Philippines, and were brought to Basilan in May 2001. One Peruvian-American was beheaded; the American missionary was killed in a botched military rescue operation in Zamboanga del Norte in 2002. His wife survived the incident.

The military has blamed the Abu Sayyaf Group for high-profile kidnap-for-ransom, beheadings, bombings, and other terror activities in the south. It has not categorically blamed the group for the recent kidnapping in Malaysia on April 2.

It has links with the Jemaah Islamiya, the southeast Asian conduit of the Al Qaida that was once led by the late Osama Bin Laden.