Maj. Gen. Rodrigo Maclang, 8th Infantry Division commander, said the encounter in Leyte occurred in Sito Surosimbahan, Barangay Taglawigan, San Isidro town.
Elements from the 39th Infantry Battalion were conducting combat patrol when they chanced upon a 10-man rebel team at about 8 a.m. in the vicinity of Barangay Taglawigan.
In the firefight that ensued, two of the rebels were killed but their bodies were dragged by their fleeing colleagues.
The encounter was part of an ongoing drive to thwart rebels from re-establishing an already dismantled mass base in the province.
Two months ago, Army troops discovered and captured the Leyte-based rebels’ main camp at the tri-boundary of Inopacan-Mahaplag-Maasin area.
The mass grave have so far yielded more than 200 skeletal remains of the NPA purge.
Part of the camp, called The Garden, is the rebels’ mass grave for victims of their summary executions.
Meanwhile, in Quezon province, Army troops caught up a band of rebels in the hinterland of San Narcisco town.
Maj. Gen. Fernando Mesa, 2nd Infantry Division Commander, said an insurgent was killed in the firefight.
Lt. Col Rhoderick Parayno, Southern Luzon Command public information officer, identified the casualty as a certain Ka Egay, allegedly a secretary of the Guerrilla Front Committee 41 operating in Quezon province. — With Arnel Ozaeta