Communist rebels burn passenger bus in Iloilo

MALAY, Aklan -- Suspected members of the communist breakaway group Revolutionary Proletarian Army (RPA) burned a passenger bus en route to Iloilo from Busuanga, Aklan last Thursday, a day after two Army battalions left Panay to augment government forces in Mindanao, police said.

Chief Inspector Edwin Tupaz, this town's police chief, said three rebels, reportedly belonging to the RPA's Northern Front Committee under Jessie Nalaunan, ordered the 48 passengers of the Ceres bus to alight in Barangay Kabulihan, near Caticlan town. They then doused the bus with gasoline and torched it.

"Don't worry, you will not be harmed. We only need the bus. We sent a letter to Ceres but there is no response," the passengers quoted the rebels, armed with short firearms, as saying.

Police said Vallacar Transit, which owns the bus, could have failed to pay "revolutionary taxes" to the RPA.

In other developments:

* A ranking New People's Army leader in Central Luzon, Edmundo Antonio, 56, was captured last Thursday in Dinalupihan, Bataan. Antonio, deputy secretary of the communists' Bataan-Zambales Provincial Party Committee, did not resist arrest when lawmen pounced on him along the national highway in Barangay Happy Valley.

* Soldiers and Tarlac policemen, hot on the tracks of NPA guerrillas extorting money from villagers, have arrested rebel returnee Benjamin Cayabyab, 39, who has rejoined the communist movement, in San Jose, the hometown of Gov. Jose Yap.