DAVAO CITY, the Philippines, Dec. 27 (Xinhua) -- Eleven government forces were wounded in a landmine blast believed to set off by leftist rebels in southern Philippines on Wednesday, military officials on Thursday said.
The explosion at a village in Monkayo town, in Mindanao's Compostela Valley province of the southern Philippines, resulted in a clash that caused an unknown number of casualties, said Lt. Col. Ezra Balagtey, spokesperson of the military's Eastern Mindanao Command.
Balagtey said troops from the 25th Infantry Battalion of the Armed Force of the Philippines and a division recon team conducted combat operations following reports New People's Army (NPA) gunmen were massing at the gold-rich village for an assembly as part of the rebel group's political umbrella's 50th anniversary when the encounter happened around 10:00 a.m. local time.
"An improvised explosive device went off followed by a 20-minute gunfight that left 11 soldiers wounded. The rebels also suffered an undetermined number of casualties due to bloodstains in their withdrawal route," the regional military spokesperson said.
He said the wounded were immediately airlifted to the nearest hospital for treatment and are now in stable condition.
The Philippine military said the NPA has an estimated 4,000 members. The rebels have been fighting the government since 1969 in one of Asia's longest-running insurgencies.
During a talk to troops in southern Philippine town of Mawab on Dec. 21, the Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte ordered the government troops to "destroy without mercy" the leftist army and its legal political organizations even as he dismissed the rebels' self-imposed Christmas holiday truce.
A week before the Christmas, the rebels abducted two government soldiers and 12 militiamen following an attack on an isolated militia outpost in Mindanao's Agusan del Sur province. The hostages have yet to be located.
The nearly 50-year-old fighting has killed more than 40,000 people and stunted growth in most of the country's 60 provinces where the leftist insurgency is active.
The Philippine government has been trying to forge peace with the leftist rebels since 1986 but the on-off talks have faltered many times in the past.
