BY VICTOR REYES

FIVE soldiers were killed and six others were injured yesterday in a firefight with communist guerrillas in Baganga town in Davao Oriental.

The military setback occurred several days after Armed Forces chief Gen. Hermogenes Esperon Jr. said the military will dismantle 17 of 87 guerilla fronts in the first quarter of the year as part of government’s intensified campaign against the communist group.

According to military estimates, the NPA has at least 5,700 fighters as of end December.

Col. Benito de Leon, spokesman of the Army’s 10th Infantry Division, said the fight broke out around 10 a.m. in Sitio San Francisco in Barangay Campawan while the troops from the Bravo Company of the 67th Infantry Battalion were on combat operation.

De Leon said the NPA suffered an undetermined number of casualties.

It was the second clash reported since last Sunday when at least 30 communist guerrillas tried to overrun a patrol base of the Army’s 72nd Infantry Battalion in Boston town.

The communists failed to overrun the military detachment but a soldier was killed.

The National Democratic Front denounced the arrest of a communist leader in Bago City Monday for his alleged involvement in the bloody purge in Inopacan town in Leyte.

"His illegal arrest by the regime’s police forces is a flagrant violation of the Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees (JASIG)," said NDF chief negotiator Luis Jalandoni.

Randall Echanis, who the military tagged as a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Philippines, was arrested by police and military agents on a warrant issued by the Leyte regional trial court in connection with the killing of 15 people in the ‘80s.

The remains of the victims, said to have been suspected as military agents, were recovered in August 2006 along those of 52 other victims of summary execution by the communists.

Echanis was attending a conference on agricultural workers in preparation for a national rural congress when arrested.

There are two more arrest warrants for Echanis – for kidnapping and illegal possession of firearms issued by Cagayan and Manila courts – according to the military.

Jalandoni said Echanis is "fully protected" by the safety and immunity guarantees stipulated in the JASIG." He said Echanis is "publicly known" as a member of the official delegation of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines and known to the officials of the Royal Norwegian Government as third party facilitator of the GRP-NDFP peace negotiations.

Jalandoni called the arrest "the latest in a series of gross violations" by government of the JASIG and the Comprehensive Agreement on the Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law which was forged in 1998.

Esperon, whose tour of duty was extended by the President until May 9 to sustain the fight against the communists, said Echanis’ arrest is "the AFP’s January offering."

"More to come. Watch out in February," he added.

Echanis, who Esperon said is "trained in urban partisan operations," is the second member of the CPP Central Committee to be arrested in the past two months. CPP Central Committee member Elizabeth Principe was arrested last November in Quezon City.