20 Killed as Filipino Troops Battle Cultists

Twenty people were killed in a gun battle between members of a Christian religious group and army troops in the southern Philippines, an army spokesman said Saturday.

Maj. Johnny Macanas said the encounter took place Friday in the town of Pangantocan in Bukidnon province on Mindanao Island, 870 miles south of Manila, the Philippine capital.

The troops were accompanying local police to arrest Alfredo Opciona, the leader of the Tadtad religious sect, on charges of attempted murder, police said.

“They went to the place of this religious sect supposedly to serve a warrant of arrest to the leader of the Tadtad group, but [the group] resisted and there was an encounter,” Macanas said in a radio interview.

Fighting began after the cult members, armed with long knives and homemade guns, refused to give up the suspect, said Edgardo Villamayor, the provincial police chief.

Sixteen Tadtad members, including the suspect, were killed, along with three members of the army auxiliary group and one civilian.

Cult members in remote areas of the Philippines, a mostly Roman Catholic nation, often combine traditional and Christian beliefs.

Tadtad was one of several civilian organizations that battled Muslim insurgents in the 1970s, but police say it now functions as a Christian cult.

Macanas said the army began a search for cult members who had fled, but it was not known how many were at large.

Macanas denied that the encounter had anything to do with the government’s battle with Muslim insurgents on Mindanao.

“There’s no connection,” he said. “This was a Christian religious organization, and there was just a warrant for the group’s leader.”