Security tight in NCotabato amid NPA threats

NORTH COTABATO, Philippines - Authorities on Friday tightened security in four North Cotabato towns due to persistent threats of massive attacks by communist rebels.

Senior Supt. Danny Peralta, provincial police director, said barangay leaders and policemen in the neighboring President Roxas, Magpet, Antipas and Makilala towns are now on high alert, helping monitor the areas from where rebels can launch attacks.

Peralta said they have been receiving reports from villagers on plans by the New People’s Army (NPA) to attack the police offices in the four towns to retaliate for the group’s heavy losses in recent encounters with government forces in different parts of Mindanao.

The NPA had suffered casualties in a bungled attempt to take over last May 20 the police station of President Roxas.

Members of the municipal police had apparently prepared for the attack, after having been warned by villagers, enabling them to effectively fend off the NPAs, forcing their hasty retreat carrying five slain companions.

More than a dozen NPAs were also reported wounded in the brief encounter with members of the President Roxas municipal police.

The central office of the Department of Interior and Local Government awarded the policemen in President Roxas with special citations for gallantry a week later.

Peralta said soldiers belonging to the Army’s 57th Infantry Battalion are now helping the local police guard the four towns against possible NPA attacks.

Lt. Col. Noli Vinluan, commander of the 57th IB, said what is bothersome for them is the wanton roadside bombings by the NPA’s Guerilla Front 53, targeting not just police and Army vehicles, but public transportations as well.

“These bombings are serious transgressions of the International Humanitarian Law governing the conduct of warfare,” Vinluan said.

Vinluan said they have intensified their security patrols in hinterlands around President Roxas, Magpet, Antipas and Makilala, to prevent NPAs from getting close.