By Manny Mogato

MANILA, May 11 (Reuters) - The four children of Indonesian militant Dulmatin, a suspect in the deadly Bali bombings in 2002, were found during a raid on a suspected rebel hideout in the southern Philippines, a military spokesman said on Friday.

Lieutenant-Colonel Ariel Caculitan, spokesman for the Philippine Marines, said security forces tracking Jemaah Islamiah (JI) militants on the remote southern island of Simunul found the four children, aged from two to nine years.

"We were acting on intelligence information, but we don't want to confirm the presence of Dulmatin in the area," Caculitan told reporters.

"Our troops will turn over the children to government social workers and the immigration office. We want them to be reunited with their mother who returned to Indonesia after she was caught last year in the south."

Dulmatin, who has a $10 million bounty on his head from the U.S. State Department, was a senior member of Jemaah Islamiah, a regional terror network that seeks an Islamic superstate in parts of Southeast Asia, intelligence officials say.

Caculitan said an Armalite rifle and unspecified equipment were seized during the raid, but did not mention anyone being apprehended other than the four children.

Philippine security officials have said Dulmatin and another suspect in the Bali bombing, Umar Patek, were part of a group of up to 10 JI members hiding on the southern island of Jolo and training Abu Sayyaf members in building crude bombs.

Abu Sayyaf has been blamed for the worst militant attack in the south of the mainly Roman Catholic country, the 2004 bombing of a ferry near Manila which killed more than 100 people.

The 2002 bombing on Indonesia's resort island of Bali, blamed on JI, killed 202 people, many of them foreign tourists.

Since August, about 8,000 soldiers have been battling 400 Abu Sayyaf rebels on Jolo to flush out several Islamic militants who have fled from crackdowns in neighbouring Southeast Asian states Malaysia, Indonesia and Singapore.

Hermogenes Ebdane, a former national police chief who was named defence secretary in February, said the security forces had already dismantled JI's training camps in the south and expressed confidence the militants would soon fall into government hands.

"They're now on the run after they were forced out from their camps in central Mindanao," Ebdane told foreign correspondents on Friday, adding the largest Muslim rebel group talking peace with government has been cooperating in tracking down the militants.

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