“The camp has several foxholes, kitchens, and three makeshift classrooms and a water supply,” Major Enrico Ileto, 3rd Infantry Division (ID), said in a statement Friday.
The camp was built by the communist rebels in a remote area and it could have been used as a training facility, Ileto said.
“The camp was situated behind mountainous terrain, thick vegetation and trees and can be reached through hours of walk from the nearest barangay roads of Bucari, Danao and Cagay of Leon Municipality,” he said.
Ileto said that the camp was discovered with the help of the local residents who tipped off about the presence of the rebel camp.
He said a previous encounter with the rebels made government troops suspicious because of the high level of resistance the insurgents were putting up.
“A squad of soldiers conducting follow-on combat operations discovered 9:20 a.m. Thursday [the camp] believed to have been abandoned recently by top regional NPA personalities of Panay island after the said encounter,” Ileto said.
Lieutenant Colonel Aldwine Almase, 82nd Infantry Batallion Commander, said that the discovery of the abandoned camp will greatly benefit the villagers, some of whom might have been lured to train as a rebel of the NPA.
“This is for the populace of the hinterlands who may have been wrongly lured to undergo trainings in these camps. Unknowingly, the ‘armed struggle’ they were introduced to has detrimentally affected their own lives,” Almase said.
The NPA is the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines. It has been waging a Maoist rebellion for more than four decades in the country.
Their strength has reportedly greatly diminished over the past several years. The government has been trying to negotiate peace with the NPA but has so far been unsuccessful.