(Recasts with troops seize rebel camp, toll rises) MANILA, June 8 (Reuters) - Philippine troops seized a communist rebel base after a four-hour battle near a southern mining town that left six people, including four soldiers, dead and dozens wounded, an army general said on Friday. Brigadier-General Carlos Holganza said the troops attacked a communist New People's Army (NPA) hideout near the mining town of Monkayo late on Thursday, but met heavy resistance. "We suffered heavy casualties because the rebels detonated landmines around their camp," Holganza told Reuters, adding the soldiers also "got some of them". "We recovered the bodies of two rebels that were abandoned by their fleeing comrades who were seen by some people in the area to be carrying their wounded companions. Holganza said the soldiers captured the rebel base on Friday and found food, medicines and casings of rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) in some of the bunkers, linked by a tunnel system in the mountains near Monkayo and the Compostela Valley. The Philippine army says the Maoist-led guerrillas are active in gold-rush areas of the Compostela Valley, earning a few million pesos from extortion activities and illegal mine operations. Since 1969, the NPA rebels have waged a protracted rebellion that has killed more than 40,000 people and slowed growth in the rural areas of one of the poorest countries in Southeast Asia. President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has ordered an all-out war on the 7,000-member NPA, which operates in 69 of the nation's 81 provinces, mostly in the poor and typhoon-prone areas. Peace talks, brokered by Norway, collapsed in August 2004 when the United States and some Western European states put the NPA and its leader, Jose Maria Sison, on terrorism blacklists.
