United States stealth fighters streaked across the sky and rockets blasted imaginary enemies in the northern Philippines as two weeks of combat drills involving 2,500 Philippine and US Marines engaging in mock amphibious assaults and other coastal tactics neared an end.
The live-fire exercises in a remote valley north of the capital, Manila, on Thursday were the highlight of joint combat readiness manoeuvres codenamed Kamandag – a Tagalog acronym for “Cooperation of the Warriors of the Sea” – which ends on Friday, military officials said.
