Reds raid Army camp, cart away 15 firearms

ZAMBOANGA CITY — Communist guerrillas overran and ransacked an isolated military camp in Bukidnon Thursday morning and escaped with 15 firearms, the Armed Forces’ Southern Command said.

At least 50 fighters of the New People’s Army (NPA) swooped down on the temporary patrol base of the 8th Infantry Battalion in Barangay Concepcion in Valencia City at about 9 a.m. as the soldiers and pro-government militiamen were eating breakfast, said Lt. Gen. Roy Kyamko, Southcom chief.

The rebels took the weapons, including an M-16 rifle, six Garand rifles and two Carbines, and two field radios and fled without any resistance from the militiamen, Kyamko said. There were no casualties in the incident.

Troops of the Army’s 403rd Infantry Brigade have been dispatched to pursue the guerrillas, reportedly led by Alexander Llesis of the communists’ Central Mindanao Regional Committee.

Maj. Gen. Cristolito Balaoing, chief of the Army’s 4th Infantry Division, said the NPA raid should prompt field units to take extra precautions to thwart such an attack.

This month alone, 15 soldiers were killed in NPA attacks, two of them in a raid on a Coast Guard detachment and Navy vessel in Real, Quezon.

Five Army engineers were slain in an NPA ambush in Compostela Valley, while five soldiers, including a young lieutenant, and two policemen lost their lives in a series of attacks on Mindoro island.

The NPA is the armed wing of the Maoist Communist Party of the Philippines. The government has said it was preparing to resume talks with the rebels’ political arm, the National Democratic Front, in Norway.

The talks were suspended two years ago when the NPA murdered two legislators. — With Jaime Laude and AFP