MANILA, Nov 11 (Reuters) - Masked gunmen in the Philippines shot and killed a left-wing labour leader in what a rights group said on Tuesday was the latest extrajudicial killing in the country.

Rolando Antolihao, a labour leader at a banana plantation in Davao del Norte on the southern Mindanao island, was shot seven times on Monday night, said Kelly Delgado, secretary-general of "Karapatan", the Filipino term for rights.

"He died on the spot," Delgado told reporters, adding Antolihao was the third member of the left-wing political party, Bayan Muna (Nation First), to be murdered in the Compostela region, a mining area, this year.

Last week, another community leader of the Bayan Muna party was killed by motorcycle-riding gunmen in the Compostela region.

Benilito Bianzon, police chief in Davao del Norte province, said it was premature to blame anyone.

"We're still interviewing witnesses and trying to determine all possible motives behind the murder," Bianzon said.

Delgado said five left-wing community organisers, labour leaders and rights advocates had been killed in the Compostela region this year as the government intensified counter-insurgency operations in the country's mining region.

Karapatan has documented at least 43 political killings and 19 forced disappearances from January this year. It has listed more than 1,000 cases of murders and over 200 abductions since 2001 when President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo came to power.

Last year, Philip Alston, United Nations special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, said in a report that soldiers were killing left-wing activists as part of a counter-insurgency campaign against communist rebels.

The military has denied the charge and has instead blamed the deaths, often carried out by masked men on motorbikes, on an internal purge within the communist New People's Army (NPA). (Reporting by Manny Mogato; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)

AlertNet news is provided by