NPA killing fields yield 30 remains

ZAMBOANGA CITY -- The remains of at least 30 people believed to have been summarily executed by the communist New People's Army (NPA) during the so-called "Operation Zombies" have been unearthed by government troops in a remote village in Mindanao, the military said yesterday.

Southern Command chief Lt. Gen. Edgardo Espinosa said the mass grave was accidentally discovered by villagers in the town of Claveria, Misamis Oriental Saturday.

The villagers later informed the military, which recovered the remains.

Local military officials said the victims could have been former members of the NPA executed during a purge of suspected government spies in the 1980s in what was known as Operation Zombie.

"Initial findings pointed to the mass execution of the communist rebels of their comrades whom they suspected as spies of the government during the 1980s," Espinosa said.

Last week, the military disclosed it believed more than 4,000 people were executed in the NPA internal purge.

The military said more than half of the 4,000 were armed regulars while the rest were only sympathizers of the communist movement. Of the total, it said only 15 were known deep penetration agents of the government.

The latest findings bring to more than a hundred those exhumed in various mass graves in the main southern island of Mindanao, Espinosa said.

The NPA is the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines, which has been waging a Maoist insurgency in the past three decades. -