GMA awards merit medals to 14 members of 6th ID

CAMP SIONGCO, Maguindanao — President Arroyo yesterday awarded with merit medals 14 members of the Army’s 6th Infantry for their role in last week’s liberation of seven villages at the border of Columbio, Sultan Kudarat and Tulunan, North Cotabato from occupation by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

Of the 14 awardees, seven were commissioned officers, among them Col. Edgardo Andes, who was wounded in an earlier ambush by combined New People’s Army guerillas and members of the notorious Pentagon kidnap-for-ransom gang in Tupi, South Cotabato.

President Arroyo, who addressed the 6th ID’s rank and file, described as her administration’s "biggest victory" the restoration of government control over the seven neighboring farming communities, where the MILF and the Pentagon tried to establish a camp, but promptly driven away by soldiers from the area.

"It was a big victory because while the enemies suffered 28 fatalities, not a single soldier perished in the operations," the President told the officers and enlisted personnel of the 6th ID.

The hostilities at the boundary of Tulunan and Columbio towns started when MILF forces in the area opened fire on soldiers sent there to verify the presence of Pentagon kidnap gang members setting up a training camp and collecting "revolutionary taxes" from farmers. After clearing the area of Pentagon and MILF forces, soldiers found out that the two groups have indeed started setting up a training camp and building fortifications in strategic spots at Barangay Polomolok in Columbio, where soldiers and the gunmen had clashed first.

Major Gen. Generoso Senga, commander of the 6th Infantry Division, said the combatants of the 6th ID and the 301st and 602nd Brigades also discovered that the rebels have also just built bunkers connected by running trenches in farms surrounding Barangay Polomolok.

North Cotabato Gov. Emmanuel Piñol, chairman of the provincial peace and order council in his province, recommended the other day the conversion of the communities, where the rebels and the military had clashed, into a peace zone to keep the combined forces of the Pentagon and the MILF from coming back.