MANILA, April 26 (Reuters) - Communist rebels killed four soldiers in a clash in the southern Philippines on Saturday, a day after they abducted two troops in the same area, police said. "Two soldiers and two militiamen (part-time soldiers) were killed in the 30-minute gun battle," Superintendent Ronald Dela Rosa, the police chief of Compostela Valley, 600 miles (965 km) south of Manila, said. The 5,000 member New People's Army (NPA), waging a near 40 year insurgency, has stepped up attacks in the southern Philippines in recent months targeting mines and foreign-owned businesses. President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has vowed to defeat the NPA by the time her final term ends in June 2010, but the rebels continue to engage in tit-for-tat attacks on the military and police. In Saturday's clash, the NPA rebels, estimated at around 30, seized the soldiers' rifles before fleeing into nearby forests, Dela Rosa said. There was no report of casualties on their side. On Friday, members of the NPA abducted two soldiers on a road leading to a gold-mining area, also in Compostela Valley. "The soldiers were passing in the area when they were stopped by communist rebels manning a checkpoint. No civilian was present during the incident," Dela Rosa said. Since last year, the NPA has kidnapped a handful of police and military officials in the Compostela area but later released them. (Reporting by Carmel Crimmins)
A boy walks past rice for sale at a market in Manila April 24, 2008. Philippines will take almost all the rice offered in a tender last week that fell one-third ...
