NPAs torch Smart tower in C'bato

ZAMBAONGA CITY -- Some 50 New People's Army (NPA) rebels attacked a telephone company in a remote village in North Cotabato Friday night, torching one of its relay stations because the company refused to pay "revolutionary taxes," military authorities said yesterday.

The rebels swooped down on the relay station of Smart Communications Incorporated, a Manila-based telecommunications provider, said Col. Fredesvindo Covarrubias, chief of the Public Affairs Group of the Armed Forces in Mindanao.

Covarrubias said the NPA has been extorting money from Smart, but the firm's officials have refused to pay.

About 11 p.m. Friday, NPA rebels armed with high-caliber rifles descended from the forested sections of Sitio Kalapungot, Barangay Kisante in Makilala town, North Cotabato and ransacked the Smart offices before setting the relay station on fire.

Nobody was hurt in the incident. Maj. Salih Indanan, spokesman of the Armed Forces' Southern Command, said the rebels allowed the caretakers to leave the facility.

Company officials are assessing the extent of the damages but the military began pursuit operations against the NPA, the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines.

Military authorities believe the NPA has conducted more extortion activities because of dwindling financial support from its traditional sources abroad.

Tensions between the government and the communist rebels have been high since last year when the communists withdrew from peace negotiations after the Senate ratified the Visiting Forces Agreement, a controversial defense pact with the United States.

Last year, the NPA torched equipment and vehicles of a South Korean construction company in Quezon province after the firm's officials refused to pay the group's $1.5 million demand.

One of the suspected masterminds of the attack, which resulted in damages of $525,000, was arrested last week and is now being held by the military.