The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) encouraged the remaining communist fighters in the country on Tuesday to surrender so that the government can finally focus on a “bigger” challenge – protecting the West Philippine Sea (WPS) from foreign hostile forces.
AFP Spokesperson Colonel Margareth Padilla said that a total of 1,367 communist fighters and supporters were either killed, arrested or have surrendered to authorities this year.
From Jan. 1 to Aug. 8, 1,169 of them laid down their arms and yielded to government forces nationwide while 101 were arrested, and 97 were killed.
“We are enjoining these surrenderees to join us in this effort for us to really go forth and move on to bigger challenges which is the West Philippine Sea issue,” Padilla said during the Kapihan sa Bagong Pilipinas at Camp Aguinaldo in Quezon City.
The military’s operations resulted in the confiscation of 751 firearms and 237 anti-personnel mines, while 165 enemy encampments were seized.
“No guerilla fronts remain active across the country as of today,” Padilla said, noting that the majority of those neutralized have surrendered to the military.
To date, there still remains seven “weakened” communist guerilla fronts which are the subjects of unrelenting operations of the AFP in known enemy hotspots.
This decreased from 11 weakened guerilla fronts at the start of the year.
Aside from that, 176 local terrorists were also neutralized by the government forces: 124 surrendered, six were arrested while 46 were killed.
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