Joint Philippines-US Military Exercises Start Monday

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Monday, October 14, 2002

Joint Philippines-US Military Exercises Start Monday

A new round of Philippines-US joint military exercises will start Monday in the northern Philippines as scheduled, military officials said Sunday.

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A new round of Philippines-US joint military exercises will start Monday in the northern Philippines as scheduled, military officials said Sunday.

About 600 US troops arrived Sunday at the former American navalbase in Subic Bay, some 70 km north of Manila, from a military base in Japan, joining another 200 American servicemen who arriveda day earlier at the nearby former US Clark airbase.

The joint war games, dubbed Talon Vision-02, will be held from Oct. 14 to Oct. 26 at Clark and other areas on the main northern island of Luzon, said Major Allan Ballesteros of the Clark-based Philippine Air Force.

The Americans have brought with them four C-130 cargo planes and six CH-53 Super Stallion and Cobra attack helicopters.

Both Philippine and American officials said earlier that the exercises will go on despite a bomb attack in the southern city ofZamboanga on Oct. 2 that killed one US soldier and three Filipino civilians and injured more than 20 others, including a US serviceman.

The American casualties are among some 260 US servicemen who stayed behind to finish construction works after six-month joint military exercises in the southern Philippines ended in July, in which over 1,000 US troops participated to help the local militaryhunt down Abu Sayyaf bandits.

Authorities suspected the bomb attack was carried out by the Abu Sayyaf, which had alleged links with the al-Qaeda network of Osama bin Laden, the suspected mastermind of the attacks on the United States on Sept. 11 last year.

The two countries had also conducted several rounds of joint war games in Luzon earlier this year.

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