MANILA, Philippines — Communist guerillas killed six soldiers and wounded six others on Tuesday, the military said, in one of the deadliest recent attacks in the country's 50-year-old Maoist insurgency. Members of the New People's Army detonated bombs in a pre-dawn ambush of soldiers marching through a mountainous area of central Samar island, triggering a four-hour firefight. NPA units rarely engage large military units in big firefights, preferring to target poorly equipped provincial police forces or isolated military or paramilitary detachments. Tuesday's attack was among the deadliest launched by the NPA since mid-2017, when President Rodrigo Duterte called off peace talks with the now 50-year-old insurgency. That decision followed a series of NPA attacks that killed six police officers and wounded five of the president's military bodyguards.

Source: Philippine Star April 23, 2019 09:45 UTC