BUKIDNON (Mindanao Examiner / 21 Mar) – Security forces on Wednesday mounted a fresh operation to track down dozens of communist insurgents who raided a private coal mining firm in the southern Philippines, police and military said.
Military reports said the New People's Army (NPA) gunmen attacked the MG Mining Company in Raja Cabunsuan village in Surigao del Sur’s Lingig town on Tuesday afternoon.
Troops were dispatched to hunt down the insurgents in the hinterlands. The NPA band, the military said, carted weapons taken from security guards at the mining headquarters.
The military did not say how many guards had been disarmed, but other reports claimed as many as seven people had been briefly taken captive by the raiders during the attack.
It was unknown what triggered the raid, but a military report leaked to the Mindanao Examiner suggested that the attack had something to do with forced taxation imposed by the NPA on mining firms in the province.
The gunmen had been collecting so-called "revolutionary taxes" to support its armed struggle to overthrow the democratic government for a separate Maoist homeland in the Philippines.
The weapons maintained by the firm’s security guards may have also attracted the insurgents, the reports said. (Mindanao Examiner)
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