Manila: A Filipino-Muslim cleric trained in the Middle East established a fourth secessionist group in the southern Philippines, sources have said.

Mohammad Ali Tambako established the Justice for Islamic Movement (JIM), initially with 70 members who were trained to make bombs and explosive devices in the south in 2013, Col. Restituto Padilla, spokesman of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, told Gulf News.

The militant leader has established a weapons factory, which is “now the target of a military campaign”, Padilla said. It is located in Dasikil Village, Mamasapano town, Maguindanao in central Mindanao.

The revelations come as the country’s Congress delays the passage of a bill that will bring into effect a pro-autonomy peace settlement forged by the Philippine government and a 37-year old mainstream Filipino-Muslim rebel group in 2014.

In 2013, Tambako differed with Ameril Umbra Kato, leader of the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Movement and its armed wing, the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFM-BIFF), which became a faction of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in 2008, said Padilla.

At the time, Kato was against the MILF’s policy of holding peace talks with the Philippine government.

In 2014, the Philippine government and the 12,000 strong MILF eventually forged a peace settlement that called for enhanced self-rule for five million Filipino-Muslims in a wider autonomous region in the south. Negotiations began in 1997.

“JIM has been protecting five of 12 Southeast Asian militant Islamists who have been hiding in the south since 2003,” Padilla said, adding JIM is Mindanao’s fourth militant group.

The seven-year old BIFM-BIFF wants to establish an Islamic state in the south.

The Khalifah Islamiyah Mindanao (KIM), established in 2013 as the southern Philippine chapter of the Indonesia-based Jemaah Islamiyah, is also for secession. The Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG), established in the south with the help of a relative of the late Al Qaida leader Osama Bin Laden in the 1990s, supports a secessionist stance.

The four groups have been blamed for kidnap-for-ransom, bombings, beheadings and other terror activities in the south.

Last year, ASG and BIFM-BIFF commanders vowed allegiance to the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and its campaign to establish an Islamic Caliphate world-wide.