March 14, 2005, AFP / Khaleej Times, Al Qaeda-linked militants set to end bloody Philippine jail revolt.

MANILA - Philippine government negotiators won an agreement on Monday with Al Qaeda-lined militants to end a 10-hour revolt at a maximum-security prison after six people were killed during an attempted breakout, police said.

The negotiators won the provisional agreement for the Abu Sayyaf rebels to end the standoff in exchange for security guarantees, the right to a speedy trial, access to the press to air their stand and right to have their own lawyers.

Officials are hoping to effect the surrender before nightfall at the Camp Bagong Diwa prison, which has been surrounded all day by hundreds of snipers and police special forces units.

“It’s a win-win solution,” national police spokesman Leopoldo Bataoil told reporters.

The prisoners who negotiated the terms called for better jail conditions and a faster resolution of the criminal cases against them.

However, state prosecutors insisted Monday that the violence was part of an escape attempt hatched by the Abu Sayyaf as early as last month.

“We warned them (the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology), about three weeks ago and as late as last week, of the planned escape try. Apparently our warnings were ignored,” state prosecutor Peter Medalle told reporters.

State prosecutor Leo Dacera said the authorities had intercepted a telephone conversation between Alhamser Limbong, the alleged leader of the prison revolt, and Abu Sayyaf leader Jainal Sali, who is at large, in which the detainee "requested that eight safehouses be prepared".

The militants overpowered the guards and seized three of their guns during a routine daybreak headcount of the 435 inmates, who include 129 members of the Al Qaeda-linked Muslim Abu Sayyaf gang on trial for kidnapping and murder.

The ensuing shoot-out died down mid-morning as negotiators using loudspeakers started trying to persuade the prisoners to give themselves up, officials said.

The Manila jail holds many of the top detained leaders of the Abu Sayyaf as well as some of the suspects in the worst terrorist attacks in the Philippines.

They include the suspects in the 2000 bombing of a Manila overhead rail system that claimed more than 20 lives and the firebombing of a ferry on Manila Bay last year that left more than 100 people dead, national police spokesman Leopoldo Bataoil told reporters.

Superintendent Agerino Cruz, the Manila police spokesman, told reporters three jail guards and one prisoner had been killed.

Other police sources however put the death toll at six including four Abu Sayyaf inmates and two prison guards. The sources said a prisoner and a jail guard were wounded.

Manila police chief Avelino Razon said the uprising appeared to have been instigated by "a core group of 10".

The gunmen are "hardened criminals, terrorists," national police chief Arturo Lomibao told reporters.

On the upper floors of the prison some of the inmates, many of them naked from the waist up, peered out from behind bars. It was unclear how many of the prisoners were taking part in the revolt.

Late morning Parouk Hussin, the governor of a Muslim self-rule area in the south called the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao, and legislator Mujib Hataman entered the prison compound to help authorities negotiate with the gunmen.

Bataoil told reporters the gunmen were believed to be led by Limbong and Tahir Abdul Gafar, both on trial for the kidnapping of a group of tourists including three Americans in the western Philippines in 2001.

Several of the captives, including two Americans, were killed in the year-long hostage drama that ended with the rescue of the third American, Christian missionary Gracia Burnham.

Since then the Abu Sayyaf group, set up in the 1990s allegedly with money from Al Qaeda, has entered the US State Department's "foreign terrorist organization" blacklist.

Limbong is also a suspect in the Manila ferry bombing.

Among the 129 Abu Sayyaf inmates in the prison are senior leaders Galib Andang, alias "Commander Robot", who was arrested in 2003, and Najdmi Sabdula who was detained in 2001.

Both are defendants in the kidnappings of 21 Western tourists and Asian resort workers in the Malaysian island resort of Sipadan in 2000. The group was ransomed off for million dollars.

The shooting was the latest in a series of jailbreak attempts involving detained Muslim militants in the Philippines.

About 11 months ago eight escapees were killed after at least 53 prisoners, including about 20 Abu Sayyaf suspects, broke out of a jail on the Abu Sayyaf stronghold of Basilan island in the south.