Troops recover land mines from NPA camp in Isabela

GAMU, Isabela – Troops recovered claymore mines and “subversive documents" from a communist rebel camp in the northeastern Philippine province of Isabela, the Philippine Army said on Thursday. Maj. Gen. Melchor Dilodilo, chief of the Army’s 5th Infantry Division (ID) based in Gamu town, said the items were recovered after a reconnaissance team led by 2Lt John Paul Baclig chanced upon an undetermined number of rebels. Citing field reports, he said soldiers from the 45th Infantry Battalion seized various war materiel and documents of the New People’s Army (NPA) rebels (NPA) in San Mariano town’s remote sitio of Dipugpug. The ensuing firefight caused the rebels to scamper in different directions, leaving behind improvised claymore mines, armaments, compass, jungle packs, personal belongings and voluminous subversive documents with high intelligence value, reports said. The rebels reportedly took with them their wounded comrades., “There’s no casualty on our side but this doesn’t mean that we will rest on our laurels. We will continue to unleash all our efforts to ensure that the decades old insurgency problem will be eradicated by 2010," said Dilidilo. The most recent encounter came two weeks after the Army discovered another abandoned rebel camp, also in San Mariano, a former logging town and was once the hotbed of communist insurgency, from the 1970s to the early 1990s. The Army believes that the NPA rebels are forced to abandon their camps due to the relentless anti-insurgency campaign of government troops in the area, where pockets of communist influence are still felt. “The rebels are now fast losing its base of mass support here because they have become a hindrance to the economic development of the people in the region," said Dilodilo, whose command covers Cagayan Valley, Ilocos and Cordillera regions. Recently, a plan by the rebels to seize an Army camp in Jones, Isabela, failed due to information shared by residents to the Army’s intelligence unit. The latest successful anti-insurgency campaign came a day after Army commander Lt. General Victor Ibrado visited the 5th ID Headquarters in Camp Upi. - GMANews.TV