Reds attack Coast Guard station, Navy ship; 2 dead

LUCENA CITY — At least 50 communist guerrillas attacked a Coast Guard station and a Navy ship in Real, Quezon yesterday morning, killing a Coast Guard officer and a Navy personnel and wounding five others, the military said.

Lucena Coast Guard commander Christopher Caunan identified the two fatalities as Master Chief Petty Officer Joseph Denamarca, head of the Coast Guard’s Real station, and Seaman First Class Ismael Bernal, a crewman of Patrol Craft Fast (PCF) 352.

Five other government men, including a policeman who responded to the emergency call, were wounded.

Caunan said the guerrillas arrived in two groups at about 11 a.m., one attacking the Coast Guard station in Barangay Ungos and the other swooping down on the Navy vessel docked some 50 meters away from the Coast Guard outpost.

The rebels who attacked the Coast Guard station, he said, came aboard two motorized bancas, while the second group rode a passenger jeepney and two L-300 vans.

Superintendent Federico Terte, Quezon police director, said the 11 Coast Guard personnel manning the Real station shot it out with the rebels and stood their ground for at least an hour until Army and police reinforcements arrived.

The insurgents, who fled toward the mountains of Mauban town, carted away a 9-mm. pistol, two caliber .45 pistols, a baby Armalite and an M-16 rifle.

Caunan said a rebel, identified only as one Ka Jerry, who belonged to the New People’s Army’s Apolonio Mendoza Command, was also slain in the firefight.

Military spokesman Lt. Col. Daniel Lucero said members of the Army’s 59th Infantry Battalion were pursuing the attackers.

The NPA is the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), which has been waging a decades-old rebellion.

Last week, President Arroyo said the government was set to resume exploratory peace talks with the rebels, two years after negotiations were suspended when NPA rebels gunned down two legislators. — With Rene Alviar, Jaime Laude and AFP