MANILA, June 14 (Reuters) - Philippine soldiers killed three Maoist guerrillas and seized a major rebel base on the troubled southern island of Mindanao after a three-hour battle on Saturday, an army spokesman said. Lieutenant-Colonel Romeo Brawner said three soldiers were wounded when dozens of troops battled about 60 New People's Army (NPA) guerrillas in a wooded area near Quezon town in Bukidnon province before dawn. "Our troops surprised the rebels who scampered to safety leaving behind a cache of weapons and explosives," Brawner said, adding one of the rebels killed was a woman who belonged to the NPA's medical corps. "It was a major tactical victory. We hit the rebels' regional base in northern Mindanao. We believed that we have disrupted a rebel plan to blow out government facilities in the province." Brawner said three improvised landmines and sacks of ammonium nitrate, an ingredient in making crude bombs, were recovered from the rebel base. A powerful generator, laptop computers and office supplies were also left behind by the fleeing rebels. Since 1969, the 5,000-member NPA has been waging a protracted guerrilla warfare in 69 of 81 provinces across the archipelago to set up a communist state, making it the top security problem in the country. The conflict has killed more than 40,000 people and scared away potential foreign and local investments on the resource-rich southern island of Mindanao, making it one of the poorest regions in the the Philippines. (Reporting by Manny Mogato; editing by Carmel Crimmins and Sanjeev Miglani)
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 ...
