More than half a million people have been displaced since the fighting started [AFP]

Four of the dead were children, aged between two and 10.

The Philippine military said its aircraft came under attack and it was firing back at separatists when the civilian family's boat was hit near the southern Datu Piang township on Monday.
 
Lieutenant-General Cardozo Luna, a spokesman for the military, said the incident was "very unfortunate", but blamed the separatists who he said had "provoked" the air bombardment.

The Philippine military, police and the human rights commission said on Tuesday that they would separately investigate the deaths.

The latest clash broke a week-long lull in fighting that first erupted last month after a proposed peace deal between the government and the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front was aborted.

Scores of civilians have been killed and more than half a million people have lost their homes and livelihoods since.

Leila de Lima, head of the independent Commission on Human Rights, said the displacement of communities as a result of the clashes was "a national concern of crisis proportion".

And the International Red Cross deputy director of operations, Dominik Stillhart, has appealed to separatist fighters and the military not to harm civilians as they battle each other in the worst fighting in the southern Philippines since 2003.

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