Soldier killed, 2 others hurt in clash with NPA

COTABATO CITY, Philippines - A soldier was killed while two others were wounded Tuesday as they prevented communist rebels from getting close to a hinterland North Cotabato village to collect revolutionary taxes from farmers.

Col. Ademar Tomaro, commander of the Army’s 602nd Brigade, said the fatality, whose identity he declined to reveal pending notification of immediate family, was one of three soldiers of the 57th IB wounded in the encounter at Barangay Cabilao in Makilala town in North Cotabato.

The soldiers that clashed with a marauding band of the New People’s Army were dispatched to Barangay Cabilao to check on reports by villagers of New People’s Army guerillas gathering on a hill overlooking their village, as if preparing to mount an incursion.

The villagers told intelligence operatives of the 57th IB they were certain the NPAs were to raid their community to collect “protection money,” having received extortion letters a week earlier.

Tomaro said the NPAs opened fire first on the advancing soldiers, provoking a two-hour running firefight.

The firefights waned only when the NPAs scampered away after they ran out of ammunition.

Villagers displaced by the hostilities confirmed seeing the NPAs carry seven wounded companions, mostly adolescents, four of them identified as Maknoku, Adel, Simbung and Maximo.

Ranking members of the Makilala municipal peace and order council said the same band of NPAs were behind last week’s execution of a chieftain of a Manobo tribe in nearby Magpet, North Cotabato.

The slain timuay (chieftain), Datu Amante Ansabu Pasayao, was known for his being supportive to the security efforts of the Magpet municipal police and the military in hinterland areas whose residents the NPAs subject to its illegal taxation campaigns.

Tuesday’s Army-NPA encounter in Barangay Cabilao forced dozens of families to evacuate to neutral grounds.