DAVAO CITY, Philippines (Mindanao Examiner / Apr. 1, 2011) – Philippine soldiers have seized a weapons factory being run by communist rebels on a remote village in Davao Oriental’s Rizal town, but failed to make any arrest, officials said Friday.
Officials said New People’s Army rebels had abandoned the facility Thursday in the village of Taocanga after sensing the raiders and left behind a cache of explosives and materials used in manufacturing improvised bombs.
An army spokesman said troops from the 67th Infantry Battalion have recovered the cache and brought it back to their camp and among those they seized were anti-armor and anti-personnel mines the rebels had been traditionally using against police and military targets in the southern Philippines.
“This is believed to be a manufactory of improvised landmines. With its discovery, civilian lives have been spared. It saves the lives of civilians who could have been victims of indiscriminate attacks by rebels,” Lieutenant Colonel Lydon Paniza said, adding five civilians were killed in a landmine explosion perpetrated by rebels in Compostela Valley’s Maco town in February.
The rebels are fighting for the past five decades for the establishment of a communist state in the largely Catholic country. (Mindanao Examiner)
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