By Agence France-Presse, Updated: 2/1/2010
Communist insurgents have killed five soldiers and wounded eight others in an ambush in the mountainous northern Philippines, officials said Monday.
The soldiers were walking through Malibcong town in the northern province of Abra on Sunday when guerrillas of the communist New People's Army (NPA) fired on them, local commander Lieutenant Colonel Ignacio Madriaga said.
A few hours previously, two other soldiers were wounded in Tubo town in another NPA attack.
Extra troops and helicopters were sent to pursue the rebels after the ambushes, Madriaga said.
The 5,000-strong NPA is the armed wing of the underground Communist Party of the Philippines, which has been waging a Maoist rebellion since 1969.
The military said in December that it had shrunk NPA-controlled territory, leaving four central islands free of guerrillas for the first time in decades.
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