ZAMBOANGA - Troops hunting for dozens of Islamic militants who made a stunning jailbreak on a southern Philippine island killed one of the escapees and recaptured another Monday, police said.

The weekend escape was the latest in an upsurge of violence on Basilan island that prompted the local government to call on President Gloria Arroyo to implement emergency rule there and send in more troops.

Much of the violence has been blamed on the Abu Sayyaf, a small band of militants accused of carrying out the nation's worst attacks, and whose members were among the 31 prisoners who escaped from Basilan's main jail.

"(We need) a state of emergency, if only to finish this once and for all, to apprehend and prosecute all of these Abu Sayyaf," Basilan vice governor Al Rasheed Sakalahul told AFP on Monday.

"We need more troops in the province."

As he made his appeal, soldiers and police fanned out across Abu Sayyaf strongholds on Basilan in search of the escapees.

Two of them were cornered in a jungle area that is known to be an Abu Sayyaf hideout, sparking a brief gunbattle, according to Basilan police commander Superintendent Abubakar Tulawie.

One of the escapees was killed in the clash, and the other was captured, Tulawie told reporters.

Authorities said over 100 militants stormed the poorly guarded Basilan jail before dawn on Sunday to secure the release of inmates. One prison guard and one of the militant raiders died during gunbattles.

About 20 of the escapees were Abu Sayyaf members, according to Sakalahul.

But two senior members of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), a bigger rebel group that has been fighting for an independent homeland in the southern Philippines, were also among those who escaped, Sakalahul said.

The MILF guerrillas had been jailed for their role in beheading 10 of 14 Philippine Marines snared in an ambush on Basilan in 2007.

Sakalahul said the MILF may have also been involved in organising the mass escape.

But the 12,000-strong MILF, which is holding peace talks with the government, denied it was behind the jailbreak.

"It is not the handiwork of the MILF. That is very clear. The perpetrators apparently belong to the Abu Sayyaf group," MILF spokesman Eid Kabalu told AFP.