MANILA, May 24 (Reuters) - Philippine troops raided a suspected hideout of Islamic militants in the south of the country, killing two rebels, an army general said on Thursday.

Brigadier-General Reynaldo Mapagu said soldiers stormed two makeshift houses on Wednesday in Compostela valley, where local contacts of regional militant network Jemaah Islamiah were believed to be hiding.

"Our boys met heavy resistance for 15 minutes," Mapagu said, adding that the militants fled when reinforcements arrived, leaving behind two assault rifles, supplies and military equipment.

A soldier was wounded in the fighting.

"We got information the people hiding in that area were the local contacts of Jemaah Islamiah, helping train recruits of a rogue faction of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front," he said.

The Philippines, a largely Catholic country, has been fighting Muslim insurgents for decades and has been in talks with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), the largest Islamic rebel group, since 2001 to try and end nearly 40 years of conflict.

Manila has vowed to crush a smaller, more radical group, the Abu Sayyaf, which trains with JI and has attracted disgruntled members of the MILF.

Negotiations with the MILF have been stalled since May 2006 over the size and wealth of a proposed ancestral homeland for 3 million Muslims in the south.

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