DAVAO CITY, Philippines (Mindanao Examiner / Nov. 11, 2008) – Government soldiers killed a communist rebel in a clashed in Compostela Valley province in the southern Philippines, an army spokesman said Tuesday.
The fighting, which broke out in the town of Laak on Monday afternoon, also left one government militia dead, said Lt. Col. Kurt Decapia, Public Affairs Chief of the Army’s 10th Infantry Division.
He said the fighting erupted after patrolling troops spotted a group of New People’s Army rebels in the village of New Bethlehem. He said troops also recovered a B40 anti-tank rocket and three automatic rifles from fleeing rebels.
“It is believed that the rebel group suffered heavy casualties as indicated by the bloodstains along the enemy’s route of withdrawal,” Decapia said.
Army Maj. Gen. Jogy Leo Fojas, division commander, said the offensive against the NPA will not stop until the rebel group is neutralized. “Our troops will not get tired of running after the NPA bandits,” he said.
The NPA is believed to be holding 1Lt. Vicente Camayo, a member of the 3rd Special Forces Battalion, who went missing after a fierce firefight in Compostela Valley’s Monkayo town on Friday that left two army soldiers and a government militia dead.
“We will never stop until we get hold of Camayo and return him to his loved ones,” Fojas said.
The NPA did not say whether it has captured Camayo or nor, but a rebel spokesman, Aris Francisco, confirmed that his group clashed with the military and that they were able to seize an M60 machine gun and two M16 and one M14 automatic rifles from the fighting in Monkayo town.
“The NPA tactical offensive serves as a punitive action against the 3rd Special Forces Battalion, who had been responsible for the series of violations to human rights, protocols of war and international humanitarian law in Compostela Valley,” he said.
Francisco also accused the Special Forces of masterminding the June bombing in Nabunturan town that wounded several civilians. “The bombing was a desperate and fascist attack in response to the sparrow operations of the NPA which killed two of their soldiers at that time,” he said.
The NPA 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 NPA, armed wing of the outlawed Communist Party of the Philippines, is fighting the government the past four decades for the establishment of a Maoist state in the country. (Mindanao Examiner)
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