Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) chief Gen. Gilbert Gapay said violent incidents by local terrorist groups are on ''a downtrend.''

"Their manpower, to include the number of their firearms, continue to decline so it's in a downtrend," Gapay said.

"The number of New People's Army initiated or terrorist group initiated violent incidents which compared to last year have gone down by almost, or more than 30 percent so from 130 last year. Right now, they were they were only able to perpetrate 70 plus violent incidents," he added.

Gapay said as a result of relentless operations, the military "have neutralized and captured most of the top leaders" of the local terrorist groups.

"For the CPP-NPA (Communist Party of the Philippines-New People's Army) we have captured or neutralized many of them coming from the central committee, the national level, we have their regional level leaders, up to the front committee levels," he said.

Gapay said the communists are ''experiencing leadership vaccuum.''

''That's why we have encounters here in Luzon where their formation is led by leaders from Visayas or Mindanao... but with the relentless operations they cannot do that anymore because our forces are hot on their track," he added.

On the case of the Abu Sayyaf, Gapay said aside from the neutralization of their top leaders, the military forces have mescued most the their kidnap victims in southern Philippines.

"We have neutralized many of their top leaders of the Abu Sayyaf like Furuji Indama, the leader of the notorious Abu Sayyaf Group in Basilan. Of course Hatib Sawadjaan is also a notorious leader in Sulu, and other subleaders were neutralized," he said.

"We even rescued most if not all of their kidnap victims, from a high of 28 at the start of this year. They now only have four kidnap victims and these four are their new victims... mostly these are Indonesian fishermen," he added.

With their accomplishments, Gapay expressed confidence that the military complied with the directive of President Rodrigo Duterte to end the local threat groups before his term ends in 2022.

"Based on these indicators, yes, it is very likely and very possible and we are confident that we can meet the deadline set by our President," Gapay said.

"So we have seen the light of the end of the tunnel and with popular support and unity and the Bayanihan effort which we all have, we are confident that we could meet the deadline set by our President," Gapay said. Robina Asido/DMS