Philippine rebels raid police station, seize guns

MANILA, June 24 (Reuters) Communist rebels raided a police station in the southern Philippines today, killing an officer and stealing five assault rifles, an army commander said.

Colonel Pedro Soria, a brigade commander in Cotabato area on the southern island of Mindanao, said between 20-30 Maoist-led New People's Army (NPA) guerrillas stormed the town hall in Dangcagan while police officers were having lunch today.

''The rebels killed one officer in a brief gunbattle,'' Soria said, adding that five assault rifles and three handguns were seized during the raid, the first major attack this year.

The NPA, fighting one of the world's oldest communist insurgencies, often attacks remote military and police facilities to steal weapons and ammunition.

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

Last year, NPA rebels raided nearly a dozen remote army and police outposts in the south, seizing about 100 weapons, ammunitions, communications equipment and supplies.

''We have been on alert since the elections last month because we're expecting the rebels to hit undefended police stations in the south.'' Soria said troops, backed by helicopters, were sent to nearby Bukidnon province to hunt down the rebels. Checkpoints had been setup in the rebels' possible exit points, he added.

Fuelled by widespread poverty and a sense of injustice, especially in rural areas, the NPA has been waging a violent, hit-and-run insurgency since the late 1960s and is active in 69 of 81 provinces.

At least 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict.

Peace talks with the communists, brokered by Norway, stalled in 2004 when Manila refused to persuade the United States and some European states to remove the NPA from terror blacklists.

REUTERS JT RN2051