Six troopers, 1 reb dead as army overruns NPA camp

TUBO, Abra -- Government troops overran a major New People’s Army here after a weeklong gunbattle, an Army general said Thursday, warning of reprisals ahead of a key rebel anniversary at the weekend.

Lt. Gen. Rodrigo Maclang, chief of the Armed Forces Northern Luzon Command based in Tarlac, said troops found several assault rifles, an undetermined quantity of ammunition and two landmines at the hastily abandoned rebel camp in the mountains of Barangay Tubtuba in Tubo.

Soldiers also found the body of one rebel in one of the bunkers and witnesses saw the guerrillas fleeing with some wounded comrades, Maclang added.

“We lost two men in the assault and six others were wounded,” Maclang told reporters in mobile phone text messages.

“We hit the jackpot. We’ve found a major rebel base deep in the mountains straddling three northern provinces,” he said.

Maclang said troops stumbled upon the NPA base at the end of an eight-day gunbattle with guerrillas on Tuesday.

“We’re expecting the rebels to retaliate because we probably disrupted their plan to attack Army detachments to celebrate the NPA’s 39th founding anniversary on March 29,” he added.

In Aurora province, meanwhile, two soldiers were wounded in a grenade attack by suspected communist rebels.

Maclang said two grenades were lobbed at the headquarters of the Bravo Company of the Army’s 69th Infantry Battalion in Barangay Dibacung, Casiguran town.

The Army claims to have dismantled 13 rebel bases in 2007, reducing the number of communist guerrillas from 7,000 to a little over 5,700 fighters, the lowest level in the nearly 40 years of conflict that has killed 40,000 people.

Active in 69 of 81 provinces across the archipelago, the communist rebels have also been engaged in on-off peace talks with the government since the late 1980s.

The latest round of negotiations was stalled in August 2004 over rights and terrorism issues.

The government has declined to help remove the communist group from terrorist blacklists of the United States and some Western European states.

Maclang said security forces have been placed on alert for possible rebel reprisals, particularly remote Army and police detachments and less defended municipal halls in mountainous regions.