Communist guerrillas are using a security vacuum created by the Abu Sayyaf hostage crisis in the southern Philippines to recruit new members and extend their influence, a senior military official said Tuesday.
"We have a serious insurgency problem in the central Philippines," said Major General Dionisio Santiago, commander of the central Philippines military forces.
"We lost six battalions", or about 3,000 soldiers who shipped out to the Mindanao region to battle Muslim separatists and kidnappers, he added.
The military says the communist New People's Army (NPA) now numbered about 12,000 fighters, about double their strength from the early 1990s. The Maoist group is waging a 32-year rebellion.
Santiago said about 1,400 NPA guerrillas operate in the central islands.
"Because of the pullout, the rebels got a chance to recruit," he told reporters.
President Gloria Arroyo has deployed at least 6,000 soldiers in the southern island of Basilan to track down the Abu Sayyaf group. Many of these troops came from the central islands.
More troops shipped out to the southern island of Jolo last month to quell an armed rebellion by renegade Muslim leader Nur Misuari.
The Abu Sayyaf rebels, now believed to number less than a hundred, hold three hostages including US Christian missionary couple Martin and Gracia Burnham, both Witchita, Kansas natives.
The gang has murdered more than a dozen other hostages including Californian Guillermo Sobero. The Americans were among 20 tourists seized from a western Philippines resort on May 27.
Armed forces chief of staff General Diomedio Villanueva, who visited troops in this central Philippines city, acknowledged that the Mindanao deployments has "affected the security situation in the central Philippines."
President Arroyo said in Manila on Tuesday that she has ordered the police forces "on red alert" to prevent rebel attacks that are usually mounted to mark the December 26 founding anniversary of the Communist Party of the Philippines, the NPA's mother organization.
Both sides are observing unilateral Christmas cease-fires, but the NPA torched a bus in Cebu last week in an extortion attempt. They also gunned down an Army captain in the northern Philippines.
For a time, the communists held peace talks with the government, but Arroyo suspended the negotiations in June after the NPA assassinated two members of Congress.
General Villanueva pledged Tuesday that the hostage crisis in the south "will be resolved before the end of the year." AFP
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