MILF Rebels give PI Forces back the goods
The horribly abbreviated Moro Islamic Liberation Front, who has been fighting the government of the Philippines for autonomy since the 1960s off and on, has had something of a truce for the past three years. The thing is, with 11,000 heavily armed rebels in the field armed with everything from slingshots to Chinese-made RPGs and Dshk guns, their surplus stockpiles of arms figured in at least one very messy overseas sales scheme that wound up taking down a California state senator, old Leland “Tough on Guns” Yee.
Well the MILFs stumbled across a force of Philippine National Police Special Action Force commandos poking around in their area in January and, in an incident termed a “misencounter” by both sides, some 44 cops were left dead and much of their U.S. supplied (via the War on Terror) hardware, to include M249s, M4s, M60s, M240s, and other goodies, were captured.
This led to the rebels turning over a collection of 16 of these pieces this week in an effort to keep the peace.
Of course, some in the government pointed out that most of what the commandos lost is still unaccounted for, but hey, its the Southern Philippines, mano.
Anyway, for more in-depth, I did a piece at Guns.com yesterday on it.