Troops overrun NPA training camp in Abra

Lagangilang, Abra , Philippines  – Government troops overran a huge New People’s Army rebel training camp in remote Kili village in Tubo town, Abra, a few days after a series of skirmishes last week that left the military’s death toll reaching 13 in the Cordillera region.

Believed to be the lair of communist insurgents who waylaid at least five soldiers and wounding at least a dozen more within the vicinity of Barangay Kili, troops belonging to the Philippine Army’s 50th Infantry Battalion discovered the encampment along the banks of a creek at least five kilometers east of Barangay Kili on Thursday.

Battalion commander Lt. Col. Rogelio Migote, said the location of the NPA camp makes it difficult for the soldiers and aircraft to locate.

According to Migote, the camp is a training ground of new NPA recruits because it has 31 makeshift huts which can accommodate 90 people.

Soldiers also found that the camp has a dining facility and a classroom where the NPAs hold their trainings.

“Civilians helped us find the camp,” Migote said adding, the people noticed frequent activities in the said camp such as recruitment, foraging and extortion by the NPAs.

Migote bared that the presence of the huge NPA camp may have been the reason why NPAs laid improvised explosive devices (IEDs) along the pathways to delay the advance of government troops pursuing them, reason why a number of soldiers became victims of improvised land mines laid along the rebels’ withdrawal routes.

Just as the NPA training camp was overran, another rebel arms cache was recovered by intelligence agents tipped by civilians along the forested area of remote Barangay Buneg, Lacub town also in Abra.

Brigade commander of the 503rd Infantry, Col. Essel Soriano said that hundreds of live ammunitions, weapons accessories, and electrical wires and electronic storage devices were found.