Philippine soldiers today unearthed more than a dozen crates of bullets in the mansion of a local mayor linked to last week's murder of 57 people, a spokesman said.
Hundreds of army and combat-trained police units searched the houses of local mayor Andal Ampatuan Jr, main suspect in the country's worst election-related violence, and his father for evidence.
A third house was being searched, an army spokesman said.
"Our troops were armed with a search warrant," military spokesman Lieutenant-Colonel Romeo Brawner told reporters, adding security forces were looking weapons in the houses in the southern province of Maguindanao.
Security forces disarmed the Ampatuan family after entering their houses. Mr Ampatuan Jr is already in custody.
On November 23rd, gunmen attacked a convoy of the family of a local politician planning to run for elections next year, lawyers and journalists. Fifty-seven bodies were later found off the highway, some on a grassy hillside and some buried in a hastily dug pit.
More than half the victims were journalists.
Mr Ampatuan Jr and several as yet unidentified suspects face 25 counts of murder before a regional trial court in Cotabato City on the southern island of Mindanao. They were accused of conspiracy in the execution of the wife, sisters and relatives of a rival politician, two lawyers, dozens of journalists and other civilians in Ampatuan town.
Yesterday, soldiers unearthed a large cache of weapons, including three mortars, four machineguns, three anti-tank bazookas, dozens of assault rifles and hundreds of boxes of bullets from a vacant lot about 500 metres from the Ampatuans' residential complex.
Reuters