DAVAO CITY, Philippines (Mindanao Examiner / Nov. 26, 2008) – Government troops clashed with Philippine communist rebels on Wednesday, killing one gunman in the southern island of Mindanao, an army spokesman said.
Lt. Col. Roland Bautista, of the Army’s 10th Infantry Division, said the fighting erupted in the village of Sibulan in Toril district in the outskirts of Davao City.
“Operating troops encountered the rebels and a firefight ensued that resulted to the killing of one NPA rebel,” he told the Mindanao Examiner.
Bautista was referring to the New People’s Army, armed wing of the outlawed Communist Party of the Philippines, which is waging a secessionist war the past four decades.
‘There were no reports of military casualties and anti-insurgency operation is going on,” he said.
Government forces are still searching for Army Lt. Vicente Cammayo, who was captured Nov. 19 by rebel forces after a firefight in Monkayo town in Compostela Valley province.
The NPA admitted holding Cammayo, commander of the Special Forces, as prisoner of war and warned that any military rescue operation would put the officer's life in peril.
The rebels said Cammayo is being interrogated for possible human rights violations and other crimes related to operations of the Special Forces in Mindanao.
Aris Francisco, spokesman of the NPA's Alejandro Lanaja Command, accused the 3rd Special Forces Battalion to which Cammayo's unit belongs, as responsible for the series of violations to human rights, protocols of war and international humanitarian law in Compostela Valley province.
Francisco said the Special Forces masterminded the June bombing in Nabunturan town that wounded several innocent civilians. He also tagged Special Forces members as behind the brutal murder in June of a peasant leader Noli Llanos in Nabunturan's Mipangi village, where rebels killed three government soldiers; and also the killing of farmer Diego Encarnacion in the village of Linda in Nabunturan town in July. Both farmers were accused by the military as NPA supporters.
The military denied all accusations against the. (Mindanao Examiner)
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