Six leftist rebels, including a field commander, have been killed as they clashed on Friday with government forces in the restive southern Philippines, an Army official said on Saturday.
The government troops encountered about 20 fully-armed New Peoples Army (NPA) led by a commander Felix Amodia, in the border of outskirts villages of Bacong and New Caridad in Tulunan, Cotabato, said Major Randolph Cabangbang, a regional military spokesperson.
"The firefight resulted in the death of Amodia. Our troops recovered and turned over his remains to village officials in Bacong," Cabangbang said.
"The remains of five other guerillas were taken by their comrades," he added.
Over the past days, NPA rebels have staged a series of attacks against government forces. They killed three policemen in an ambush in the township of Bansalan, Davao del Sur, Xinhua reported.
The NPA is the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines. The 5,400-strong rebel group has been waging a guerrilla war against the government since its founding in late 1960s. It halted peace talks with the government in 2003, irritated by the administration's inaction to remove it from the U. S. government's list of international terrorist organizations.