NY TIMES: Death toll in Philippines massacre up to 57, including at least 18 journalists; election violence linked to clan rivalries

inothernews:

The death toll in Monday’s election violence rose to 57 on Wednesday, the Philippine authorities said, as 11 more bodies were recovered.

The regional police commander in Maguindanao Province, Josefino Cataluna, said the bodies were dug out from a shallow pit near a grassy hilltop where police officers and troops had found 46 others after Monday’s attack, The Associated Press reported. He said the victims included the family of a gubernatorial candidate and 18 Filipino journalists who accompanied his relatives in filing his election papers.

President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo on Tuesday declared a state of emergency in the contiguous provinces of Maguindanao and Sultan Kudarat and in the city of Cotabato on the southern island of Mindanao. The measure gives the police and army the authority to apprehend and detain those who carried out the slaughter.

The southern Philippines has been plagued for years by secessionist and Islamist insurgencies. The United States sends $1.6 billion annually in military and economic aid to the Philippines, with much of it aimed at a shadowy Islamist group, Abu Sayyaf, which has ties to Al Qaeda.

The authorities said that this week’s election violence had nothing to do with those groups, but that it was rooted in rivalries among local clans that the government had empowered as a way of combating the insurgents. One clan, the Ampatuans, is considered the closest political ally of Mrs. Arroyo in that part of the southern Philippines.