Philippine military killed at least 10 suspected communist rebels in clashes in a remote area in the northern part of the country, the Associated Press reported. quoted by BTA.
This is the latest blow to the decades-long insurgency, which has weakened significantly to only about a thousand guerrillas remaining, military and security officials said today.
Army units caught up with about 20 New People's Army rebels who were withdrawing from an earlier clash with government forces on Wednesday. Ten rebels, including three commanders, were killed in the firefight near the town of Pantabangan in Nueva Ecija province, the military said.
13 rifles and a pistol were found in the fighting area, which is near a key dam, and troops are hunting about 10 more guerrillas who have retreated from the remote area, regional army spokesman Major Jimson Masangkai said.
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Brigadier General Norwin Joseph Passamonte, commander of an infantry brigade in the army, praised the soldiers but expressed sadness at the deaths of the insurgents. “The government did not fail to call on them to surrender and return to normal life,” Passamonte said in a statement, adding that the deaths should help convince the remaining guerrillas to give up.
Nueva Ecija, a rice-growing region in the north of the country, was the focus of a communist insurgency decades ago, but fewer than 50 Maoist guerrillas remain in the area, Masangkai said.
In November last year, the government and communist rebels agreed to resume talks aimed at ending the armed insurgency, which is one of Asia's longest. They met in the Norwegian capital Oslo to remove the main obstacles to stalled peace talks, Norwegian mediators said.
Actual peace talks, however, have not resumed under President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.
Officials in the Philippines say that after years of insurgency failures, surrenders and factionalism, there are now about 1,000 communist fighters left. Peace talks brokered by Norway collapsed under previous President Rodrigo Duterte after both sides accused the other of continuing deadly attacks despite the talks.