11 killed in S. Philippines clashes
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Clashes between government troops and leftist rebels continued in southern Philippines, leaving at least 11 people dead, police and military officials said on Sunday.
The latest casualties were a soldier and a village official who were killed in separate incidents in Compostela Valley and Davao del Sur provinces, in Mindanao island, on Saturday, regional police spokesperson Superintendent Querubin Manalang told Xinhua by phone on Sunday.
The soldier, a certain Private First Class Mendoza, died in a running gun battle between army troopers and New People's Army guerrillas in a hinterland village in Mabini town while village chief Ramon Danwata, of Danwata village in Malita town, in Davao del Sur, was killed when he fought it out with more than 150 NPA gunmen who stormed his residence also on Saturday, Manalang said.
Five soldiers were also wounded in an ambush as they responded to the incident in Malita, the police official said.
On Jan. 7, a policeman and four rebels were also killed when leftist guerrillas attacked a police detachment guarding a construction firm doing a government road project in Baganga town, in Davao Oriental province.
A day earlier, three soldiers on a community work were ambushed and killed on the outskirts of Tagum City, in Davao del Norte.
And two days after Jan. 3 expiration of 19-day nationwide Christmas truce between the government and the rebels, suspected NPA rebels also ambushed and killed two security guards of a pineapple plantation in the northern Mindanao province of Bukidnon. Two other civilian security personnel were wounded in that attack.
Manalang condemned the attacks, calling the rebels "anti- people and anti-development."
"The atrocities only show on desperate the rebels are in preventing government from bringing development to communities. They extort businesses and if its owners refuse to pay, they murder them or continue harassing them..Is that what you call the people's army? In the first place, these businessmen are the people themselves," Manalang said, adding the recent surge of violence achieves nothing but "loss of lives from all sides."
The NPA, armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines, has been waging a guerrilla uprising in the countryside for over 42 years. In its latest estimates, the Philippine military said the NPA has now 4, 100 guerrilla fighters scattered in more than 60 provinces throughout the Southeast Asian country.
Peace talks between the Philippine government and the rebels stalled after the United States included the NPA and its parent organization in its list as foreign terrorist organizations in 2002.
Efforts are being made between the two sides to revive the talks but Philippine military and political officials warned the upsurge of violence could adversely affect the planned talks.
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