Troops kill five, overrun Maoist camp in Mindanao

From The Gulf Today (Jan 32): Troops kill five, overrun Maoist camp in Mindanao

Army soldiers killed five members of the communist New People’s Army (NPA) when they overrun their camp in a heavily-forested area in Agusan del Sur province in volatile Mindanao, the military reported on Wednesday.

Colonel Alexander Macano, an Army battalion commander, said his men, who did not suffer any casualty, captured the camp after a fierce gunbattle on Tuesday morning in a remote village in the town of Prosperidad, Agusan del Sur.

Macano said that aside from killing the five Maoist insurgents, the soldiers also seized from the camp assorted heavy weapons, anti-tank and anti-personnel landmines, bomb-making as well as subversive materials. The camp can accommodate at least 70 people and included huts and a lecture hall which can also be used for dining, according to Macanao.

He said the capture of the camp was part of the military’s intensified campaign to protect villagers especially from remote areas who were threatened if they did not support the movement by paying them tribute such as food and money.

The NPA with about 4,000 members is the armed component of the Communist Party of the Philippines that has been waging a Maoist-style insurgency against the government for more than 45 years, considered the longest in Asia and the Pacific.

In 2012, President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino initiated the resumption of peace talks with the Maoists through their political arm the National Democratic Front (NDF) in Oslo, Norway which has been brokering the negotiations.

But the talks again bogged down in late 2013 due to what the government panel said were the NDF’s “unreasonable” demands especially the release of 30 of their “consultants” arrested on orders by the lower courts where they were facing non-bailable criminal charges such as murder, kidnapping and serious illegal detention.

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