Reds attack Tarlac police detachment

CAMP AQUINO, Tarlac — Communist rebels strafed and lobbed a grenade last Sunday on a police detachment in Tarlac City where an Army "special operations team" is currently based.

Lt. Col. Preme Monta, spokesman of the Armed Forces’ Northern Luzon Command (Nolcom), said the rebels, who were on board a black vehicle, fired several shots at the Police Community Precinct No. 11 and later threw a vintage fragmentation grenade at its gate.

The police detachment is located in Barangay Matatalaib, some three kilometers from the Tarlac City proper.

Monta said no one was hurt in the attack apparently aimed at the special operations team of the Army’s 69th Infantry Battalion, which is temporarily based in the police precinct while conducting counter-insurgency operations in Tarlac City’s eastern barangays tagged as New People’s Army (NPA) strongholds.

Monta said the Army unit’s presence in the area has "greatly affected" NPA operations in Tarlac City.

Militant and human rights activists allied with the mainstream radical group, Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan-Tarlac), have protested the deployment of Army troops in Tarlac City and in the province’s 17 towns, claiming that Tarlac has become the "most militarized province" in Central Luzon.

Aside from the 69th IB, elements of the 24th, 48th and 70th Infantry Battalions are also present in other suspected NPA strongholds across the province.

Monta, however, said the Army special operation teams are "non-combat" forces mainly tasked to determine "social problems" in the barangay level.

The government has reached a breakthrough in its peace talks with the National Democratic Front, the CPP-NPA’s political wing, but the "terrorist" tag on the communist rebels by the United States, Canada and the 15-member European Union, continues to hamper the process.

The communist leadership has insisted that theirs is a "legitimate revolutionary organization" and described the "terrorist listing" as an intrusion into the country’s domestic affairs and internal conflicts.

In other developments:

• Police have beefed up security against NPA attacks in the Isabela capital town of Ilagan after at least 15 guerrillas were sighted in two of five barangays considered to be NPA-influenced.

Senior Inspector Juancho Alloba, Ilagan police chief, said the guerrillas might be girding for offensives "to disturb the forthcoming political exercise."

• Forty rebels clashed with policemen and Army soldiers for two hours in Barangay Cabitan in Mandaon, Masbate last Monday, leaving a certain Cpl. Marlon Jalorina wounded. — With Christina Mendez, Lito Salatan and Cet Dematera