Operations to neutralize the remaining New People’s Army (NPA) in the country will not be halted during the holiday season, the Philippine Army (PA) said Tuesday.
“Our troops will remain vigilant this holiday season, and there will be no letup on our security operations to pursue the remaining members of this terrorist group,” PA spokesperson Col. Louie Dema-ala told the Philippine News Agency.
Dema-ala issued the comment when asked whether the PA will be on alert for the rest of the Yuletide season following the Dec. 19 clash in Camarines Sur, where two soldiers were killed, and three others were wounded in an NPA landmine attack.
The PA spokesperson noted that the remaining NPA members and their supporters no longer pose a threat as they are “on the run.”
“They are (no) longer a force to be reckoned with,” he said. “They are just bandits.”
Undersecretary Ernesto Torres Jr., executive director of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC), earlier stated that only about 780 NPA members remain nationwide, down from 25,000 during the group’s peak in the 1980s.
The NPA’s leadership earlier announced that it would implement a four-day unilateral ceasefire in observance of its 57th anniversary and the holidays on December 25, 26, and 31, 2025, as well as on January 1, 2026.
Both the Department of National Defense (DND) and the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) dubbed the ceasefire declaration “propaganda.”
