COTABATO – Twenty-seven journalists were among 57 people killed in a massacre in the southern Philippines blamed on an ally of President Gloria Arroyo, the military said yesterday.

Negros media groups are staging a march rally in Bacolod City on Monday against the killing of the 27 journalists.

The Negros Press Club, Congress of Active Media Practitioners, NPC Council of Past Presidents, National Union of Journalists-Negros, and Correspondents, Broadcasters and Reporters' Associations-Action News Services are joining the protest.

The dead from the massacre also included up to 15 motorists who, like the reporters, had no known quarrels with the suspects, said Lt. Col. Jonathan Ponce, military spokesman for the southwestern Philippines .

The US-based Committee to Protect Journalists said Monday's election-related massacre in Maguindanao province was the deadliest attack on the media since at least 1992, when it began keeping records.

The alleged mastermind of the killings, Arroyo ally and local politician Andal Ampatuan Jr., surrendered yesterday but insisted he was innocent.

Investigators believe about 100 of his armed bodyguards allegedly abducted a convoy of aides and relatives of a rival politician, Esmael Mangudadatu, plus a group of journalists.

The victims were in a six-vehicle convoy on their way to nominate Mangudadatu as the opposition candidate for provincial governor in next year's national elections.

They were believed to have been shot a short time later and dumped or buried in shallow graves on a remote farming road close to a town bearing the Ampatuan name.

"Most of the 27 (journalists) worked for local outfits," Ponce said.

The 15 motorists unrelated to the Mangudadatus were aboard at least two vehicles that happened to drive past as the convoy was stopped by the gunmen, he added.

Police continued the search around the sites of the mass graves yesterday, but no more bodies were found, Ponce said.*AFP

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