Thirty-five thousand young Moro students of Islamic schools were recruited for training in camps of rebels, in reaction to the deployment of American troops for war-games where the Abu Sayyaf group is hiding three hostages in Basilan, southern Philippines, a local paper said. The 35,000 students came from 50 influential Islamic schools.

"They have expressed willingness to undertake training in rebel camps. They believe that Moros may need to defend their communities from a new campaign of pacification," the Manila Times quoted Abdul Naser Mangondaya, spokesman of the Islamic Movement for Electoral Reform and Good Government, as saying.

"They (youth) are afraid the time will come that the 600 American soldiers and their panel of advisers will increase," Mangondoya told the paper.

"The volunteers who were recruited before to go to Afghanistan and those trained by foreign advisers who visited the country (Philippines) are still intact and determined to defend the cause of the Bangsamoro people in Mindanao," said another source.

The massive recruitment is taking place because members of the Moro communities are afraid that wargames could be the start of a stepped-up offensive against separatists in Mindanao, said top officials of the Supreme Council of Ulama League.

At the same time, the Ustadz (teachers) in the schools also launched a signature campaign urging the government to pull out U.S. military troops in Basilan Island and Zamboanga City, Ustadz Abubakar Usman Asis told the paper.

The threat of a resurgent rebellion should not be taken lightly, Asis said, adding Islamic religious and civic leaders have admitted that there is an increased radicalisation among young Moro students.

The Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), which had forged a pro-autonomy peace settlement with the government in 1996, recently threatened reprisals for the government's decision to hold wargames in Basilan and Zambo-anga City.

MNLF executive officer Ibrahim Abdulhasnill blamed the government for using the Abu Sayyaf group as a lynchpin for oppression against Filipino Muslims, including mainstream rebel groups such as the MNLF.

There will be a gradual expansion of joint Philippine-U.S. military operations, to include areas dominated by the MNLF and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in central Mindanao, Abdulhasnill predicted.

The MILF has admitted that some of its members underwent training by foreign advisers in 1999 and 2000, in its sprawling camps in Maguindanao and the Lanao provinces.

"The MILF command is maintaining camps in Maguindanao and Lanao, which we will not allow to be destroyed by any group," said MILF Zamboanga command chairman Professor Shariff Julabi.

Philippine authorities recently arrested an Indonesian national believed to be a member of an extremist group with links to Osama bin Laden's Al Qaida terror network.