The Philippines on Friday handed over the reins of a new Muslim-led territory to rebel leaders who waged a decades-long fight for autonomy, but are now tasked with securing peace and prosperity. President Rodrigo Duterte personally swore in Murad Ebrahim, head of the Catholic-majority nation's largest Muslim group, as interim chief minister at a symbolic Manila ceremony.
It comes after voters decisively backed in January the founding of the so-called Bangsamoro region in the south, the culmination of a peace deal to end a separatist insurgency that had killed some 150,000 people since the 1970s.
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