Many of the Philippines' poorest citizens live in the southern island of Mindanao, where the government is decisively trying to root out the foundations of a separatist Islamic state. The effort, so far, has disrupted the lives of hundreds of thousands of civilians. Rene Ciria-Cruz, a Pacific News Service editor, was also the longtime editor of Filipinas magazine in San Francisco. This is the second of three stories. Photos by Rick Rocamora available, please e-mail slouie@pacificnews.org.

MINDANAO, PHILIPPINES -- When the bombs and artillery shells fell, the people of Nalapaan village in North Cotabato fled their homes to live among the dead.

Hundreds of families pitched lean-tos in a Muslim cemetery, victims of the renewed fighting between the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), the strongest Muslim secessionist force to emerge in the country.

The government offensive against the rebels followed the kidnapping last April 23 of 21 tourists in Malaysia by the Abu Sayyaf, a Muslim group unrelated to the MILF.

The offensive marks President Joseph Estrada's rejection of the previous administration's reliance on peace talks and development programs to gain stability in the region.

Fighting has so far uprooted 200,000 refugees in the provinces of Maguindanao, North Cotabato, Sultan Kudarat and Lanao del Sur.

The cemetery is one of 24 evacuation sites in Pikit municipality -- home to the MILF's Camp Rajamuda, one of 13 rebel strongholds in this region. Government troops aim to overrun each one. Their ultimate target is Camp Abubakar, the MILF's central base in Matanog, Maguindanao province, a 12,500-acre complex of villages and bunkers that is virtually an independent Islamic state.

The 31,000 evacuees in Pikit have been living in public school buildings, churches and temporary camps. Rice rations often don't come for days.

"There have been 16 deaths from diseases here, mostly children," says Father Bert Layson of Pikit parish.

The highway to Pikit slices through a pastoral landscape of rice paddies and tall coconut trees, with distant swirls of cooking-fire smoke rising limply in the muggy air. But signs of looming violence are everywhere -- hastily dug bunkers filled with soldiers scar both sides of the highway every few kilometers or so.

Approaching Pikit town proper, two light tanks idle on the shoulder, their 25-mm. guns aimed at a wooded grove a quarter mile away. "We're eyeball to eyeball with the MIs," says Sgt. Jaime Sabillo of the 75th Infantry Battalion. "We get harassment fire at night, but it could become an all-out attack anytime."

Outside Layson's church, under a spreading tree, volunteers dole out small plastic bags of rice. Their lettered vests say they work for "Himlayang Pilipino Life Plan," a funeral insurance firm.

In the first weeks of fighting soldiers took over private homes, even chapels. Poor farmers complained that some soldiers looted their meager possessions.

"Christians had a better experience with the MIs than with the AFP," says Fr. Layson. "We had to tell people our rights just don't go away when there's war."

"Sorry for Inconvenience, War Is Going On," says a crudely painted sign in English at a checkpoint. Soldiers nap in a shed next to a burned out crater where a house used to be.

"You're not writing about human rights violations, are you?" one asks a visiting reporter. He has probably heard that the bodies of three Muslim activists were found floating in the river.

Near the road a squad of sleep-starved vigilantes rests in the shade. "Government-issue, Sir," Lord Batara, 22, says of his M-79 grenade launcher. Three other men are carrying old M-1 rifles.

One tough-looking man has "Sagrado Corazon de Jesus (Sacred Heart of Jesus)," the name of a vigilante group, tattooed on his chest. He quickly puts his shirt on when he sees a news photographer.

Christian vigilantes appeared on the scene in the late 1960s, as widespread violence erupted between migrant settlers and native Moros. Known as Tadtad (Choppers) and Ilagas (Rats), the vigilantes claim to be victims of Moro criminality. Moros accuse them of government-tolerated ethnic cleansing.

Vigilantes have reappeared in the current fighting, but their guns usually are no match for the MILF's sophisticated weapons. Critics charge that their real function is to terrorize Muslim civilians suspected of sympathizing with the rebels.

Ethnic tensions "are still under control" in the region, says Fr. Layson. Residents of unscathed and well-off town centers are the ones most hostile to the Muslims, he says.

"The people who didn't suffer want all-out war to wipe them out, but the evacuees themselves -- Moros and Christians -- want peace."

In the sweltering noonday heat, the long porches of Pikit Elementary School's single-story buildings are cramped with evacuees.

"The Christians are in Grade Four," says cigarette vendor Katrina Lavarias, 13, pointing to a squat building, which houses several poor Christian and Muslim families.

Johari Mamalangkay, 24, sits beside his 80-year-old grandfather Cabiel. "In our village we've become like Christians and they've become like Muslims, we don't really think about it."

In the next classroom Erlinda Dabal, 52, cleans a small handful of tiny grass shrimps that will flavor the boiled-rice supper for her family of five. "My daughter-in-law is Muslim," she says, introducing Farida Umal, a beautiful woman suffering from inflamed gums.

"We are all getting sick here," Dabal says, "we don't know why people are killing each other."

In the next province, Maguindanao, the heaviest fighting has been along the fiercely contested Narciso Ramos Highway to Camp Abubakar. Past the village of Parang, the houses are eerily deserted, many are tilting wrecks from the impact of aerial bombardment. There is a faint smell of decomposition.

"Thirty people died here, some were disintegrated by bombs, and 20,000 had to evacuate," says Mangontra Macapaar, 32, a Muslim. The vice mayor of Matanog, he now lives in a refugee center with his ten children and three wives.

At the Matanog town hall Marine officers are meeting with some 50 villagers, mostly elders, to assure them that "no civilians will be abused by our soldiers." The crowd has only one question: When can they return to their homes and farms?

At the evacuation center in Parang, in another school, Iranon families are settling in for the day. Mothers are boiling rice and stewing meager fare -- breadfruit chunks in coconut milk -- over smoky fires.

"We're not afraid of the MILF or the government," says Noraida Dimaampaw, 18, a freshman at Cotabato State Polytechnic College, whose granduncle was killed in a bombardment. "It's their bullets we're afraid of."