IT HAD already been looking grim: com-munist insurgents were saying they would abandon a six-month-old ceasefire on February 10th because the government was refusing to free some 400 captured comrades. Then, on February 1st, communist guerrillas waylaid and murdered three unarmed soldiers in civilian clothes, said the army. The police found 76 bullet wounds in the corpses. The killings enraged Rodrigo Duterte, the Philippines' president, who vented: "What, is a soldier a dog?" In the end it was Mr Duterte who called off the government's ceasefire and the peace talks it had fostered.
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