You are looking at the HTML representation of the XML format.
HTML is good for debugging, but probably is not suitable for your application.
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<?xml version="1.0"?>
<api>
  <query>
    <backlinks>
      <bl pageid="82" ns="12" title="Help:Images" />
      <bl pageid="84" ns="12" title="Help:Links" />
      <bl pageid="112" ns="12" title="Help:Tracking changes" />
      <bl pageid="124" ns="10" title="Template:Languages" />
    </backlinks>
  </query>
</api>