10 wounded in Maoist rebel attacks in the southern Philippines

A file photo of the KIA KM450 truck, also known as M715 truck.

DAVAO CITY, Philippines (Mindanao Examiner / Jan. 30, 2009) – Communist rebels ambushed a military convoy and raided a police station in separate attacks and wounding at least 10 people in the southern Philippines.

New People’s Army rebels detonated a roadside bomb while the military convoy was passing on a village in Paquibato District in the outskirts of Davao City on Thursday.

“Seven infantry soldiers were wounded in the landmine attack,” an army spokesman Lt. Col. Romeo Brawner told the Mindanao Examiner.

He said the soldiers also exchanged automatic gunfire with at least 5 rebels, but there were no reports of NPA casualties.

The soldiers were traveling on a convoy of eight KM450 trucks when the rebels detonated a landmine, he said. “One truck was destroyed in the blast,” he said.

Another group of NPA rebels also raided a police station in South Cotabato’s Tampakan town later in the day. At least 3 policemen were reported wounded in the raid.

The attacks coincided with demands by NPA to free three rebels arrested by government soldiers on January 26 in Compostela Valley province. Rebel leaders said the trio Ruel Cabales, 41; Nelson Carvajosa, 35; and Catherine Cacdac, 31 was abducted by soldiers.

“The January 26 incident is a blatant abduction. The 10th Infantry Division which prides itself on torturing captured NPA combatants and finishing off NPA hors de combat employs treachery and makes a mockery of the international humanitarian law and the GRP-NDFP Comprehensive Agreement on the Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law.”

“We demand that the 10th Infantry Division surface Ka Rael, Ka Janggo and Ka Kulay, and to treat their captives humanely according to universally acceptable norms and to desist from subjecting the said NPA cadres to barbaric and inhuman torture,” said Rigoberto Sanchez, a rebel spokesman.

Last year, the outlawed Communist Party of the Philippines have ordered the NPA to intensify attacks as part of its new offensive, whose main purpose it said, is to seize weapons and increase the number of rebel forces in the country.

he CPP broke off peace talks with Manila in 2004 after the United States listed the communist groups as foreign terrorist organizations and froze their assets abroad on government's prodding. (Mindanao Examiner)