Philippine army kills 8 communist rebels

MANILA, July 13 (Reuters) Philippine security forces killed eight communist guerrillas when soldiers and paramilitary forces surprised a group of New People's Army (NPA) rebels on the southern island of Mindanao, an army commander said today.

Colonel Ruperto Pabustan, a brigade commander in the Cotabato area, said villagers tipped off soldiers about NPA rebels resting near a ricefield in Arakan town, allowing troops to attack.

''We lost two of our boys,'' Pabustan told reporters after the 15-minute gun battle. ''The rebels suffered heavy casualties. We're now searching for wounded rebels in hospitals and clinics in Cotabato province.'' The insurgency by the NPA, the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines, has killed more than 40,000 people since the late 1960s. The NPA has been labelled a terrorist group by the United States and some Western European states.

Peace talks between Manila and the Maoist-led guerrillas, brokered by Norway, collapsed in August 2004 when the government declined a request by the rebels to persuade Washington and others to remove the NPA from terror blacklists.

The government of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, which recently declared an ''all-out war'' against the communists, has given a cool response to demands by some NPA officials for the talks to restart, saying it doubted the sincerity of the rebels.

The Philippine government, Washington's closest security partner in Southeast Asia, estimates the NPA membership at more than 7,000, down from a peak of 25,000 in the mid-1980s.

The Philippines is also fighting several Muslim rebel groups, some of which are suspected of having links to al Qaeda and the regional militant network Jemaah Islamiah.

Peace talks with the largest Muslim rebel group, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, stalled in May over the size and wealth of a proposed ancestral homeland for 3 million Muslims in the south of the mainly Roman Catholic country.

REUTERS MQA RN1121