Philippine Maoist rebels use decoy to stage raid

MANILA, Feb 5 (Reuters) - About 50 communist rebels wearing army uniforms abducted a Philippine town mayor and used him as a decoy to storm a local police station on the southern island of Mindanao, an army spokesman said on Sunday.

Colonel Tristan Kison said the New People's Army (NPA) rebels seized nine assault rifles and four handguns from the police officers and the mayor's bodyguards without firing a shot during a raid in Lingig town, Surigao del Sur.

"We have sent extra troops in the area to go after the rebels," Kison told reporters. "The rebels, still holding the mayor as a shield, were believed to have fled to a nearby hills in Boston town."

The Philippines, Washington's closest security ally in Southeast Asia, estimates the NPA membership at more than 7,000, down from a peak of more than 25,000 in the mid-1980s.

The insurgency of Maoist-led rebels, which has killed an estimated 40,000 people, is active in 69 of 79 provinces and has delayed rural development by terrorising rural communities and businesses with violence and "revolutionary war taxes".

Peace talks with the communist rebels, brokered by Norway, have stalled since August 2004 when Manila refused to help persuade the United States and some Western European states to remove the NPA from terrorism blacklists.

Kison said army and police units across the country were placed on alert for further attacks from guerrillas disguised as soldiers.

Last week, security forces killed 18 rebels and foiled an attack on a town hall in the northern Philippines, the biggest NPA setback in four months of offensive in the countryside.

Government and army officials, in separate interviews with Reuters last month, said the NPA were the biggest security threat because the rebels were spread around the impoverished Southeast Asian nation.