Seven soldiers and at least 20 separatist rebels were killed in fierce clashes on Friday in the troubled southern Philippines, a military official said Saturday.

Fighting between government troops and the country's largest rebel group, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), erupted in a remote Bialong village in the township of Mamasapano, Maguindanao Province shortly before 6:00 a.m. local time (2200 GMT Thursday), said local Army spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Ponce.

The military official said the troops from the Army's 601st Brigade in the region were dispatched to the village to check on the presence of some MILF rebels allegedly out to sow violence.

"We had reports that there were armed lawless MILF group in the area, so we conducted clearing operation, resulting to this (the skirmishes). This is good because the other side is planning to again attack civilian communities in the area," he said.

There were at least 80 fully-armed fighters on the rebel side, believed to be followers of MILF sub-commander Ameril Umbra Kato, who carries a 15 million-peso (310,000-U.S. dollar) reward for his arrest after leading a series of attacks on towns and villages in the southern region last year.

"The fighting lasted for eight hours that resulted in the death of 20 rebels and scores wounded while on the government side we lost seven men on the ground and five injured," Ponce said.

Ponce said the fighting was the fiercest reported between the two sides this year.

"We used artillery and mortars to drive away the enemies," he said.

"They (rebels) also established blocking positions and engaged reinforcing troops," he said.

Ponce said some of the enemies recovered at the encounter site were mangled because they were hit by artillery rounds and machine guns fired from the military's armored vehicles. He said some of the body parts were hanging on trees.

The enemy casualties could be more because the rebels usually took with them their dead and bury them in 24 hours, said the military official.

Eid Kabalu, a rebel spokesman, blamed the military for initiating the fighting and denied the alleged number of fatalities on the MILF side.

"We only suffered two fatalities. They intruded our position in the area," he said.

At the same time, the rebel leader said their fighters recovered six firearms of slain soldiers.

The fighting erupted just as Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo visited a town in Maguindanao where she inspected with local officials a solid waste management program.

Philippine troops have been pursing Kato among other MILF sub- commanders in the south since August 2008. The Malaysia-brokered peace talks between the government and the MILF collapsed last year after the two sides failed to sign an agreement on ancestral domain, prompting rogue members of the separatist group to launch deadly attacks on mostly Christian communities in Mindanao.

Ancestral domain refers to the MILF's demand for territory that will constitute a Muslim homeland. It is the last remaining hurdle for a final political settlement that is expected to end the four decades of Muslim insurgency that has claimed more than 120,000 lives. Once signed, both sides were expected to work towards a final peace deal that would include plans for the future of the group's 12,000 fighters.

(Xinhua News Agency March 28, 2009)