Philippines: Deadly Rebel Hostage Standoff Is Over A deadly three-week standoff between government troops and Muslim rebels who held nearly 200 people hostage in the southern Philippines has ended with all of the remaining captives safe, officials said Saturday. Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin said only a handful of Moro National Liberation Front rebels remained in hiding and were being hunted by troops in the coastal outskirts of Zamboanga city. He said authorities were trying to determine whether rebel commander Habier Malik, who led the Sept. 9 siege, was dead. Gunshots briefly rang out and a fire erupted in a small area Saturday. More than 200 people were killed in the clashes, including 183 rebels, 23 soldiers and police, and 12 civilians. It was in one of the bloodiest and longest-running attacks by a Muslim group in the southern Philippines, the scene of a decades-long Muslim rebellion for self-rule in the largely Roman Catholic country. We have accomplished the mission," Gazmin said by telephone from Zamboanga, where he helped oversee a government offensive and hostage rescue mission by about 4,500 government troops and police backed by tanks, navy gunboats and rocket-firing helicopters. Gazmin said 195 hostages had either been rescued, managed to escape or were freed. It was unclear whether any of the 12 civilians killed in the standoff were hostages. About 10,000 houses were burned by the rebels or destroyed in the fighting, which raged in a 30-hectare (74-acre) area encompassing six coastal communities, according to Interior Secretary Mar Roxas. Cornered and outnumbered, the rebels sought help from their comrades from nearby provinces, but guerrilla reinforcements were repulsed, Gazmin said. Police and troops still have to clear areas of the dangerous leftovers from the fighting, including unexploded bombs, guns, grenades and possible booby traps, Roxas said, adding that it may be up to two weeks before residents are allowed to return home. Gazmin, Roxas and military chief of staff Gen. Emmanuel Bautista briefly toured the scene of the most intense gunbattles Saturday in Zamboanga's Santa Catalina community, which was turned into a wasteland after nearly 100 rebels died in clashes there. Army soldiers retrieving dead guerrillas wore gas masks because of the stench from the bodies. Bautista paid tribute to his soldiers, including 18 who were killed and 169 wounded in the clashes. Bautista's father was an army general who was shot to death with more than 30 of his men in a 1977 massacre by the same Muslim rebel group on nearby Jolo island.