Troops overrun NPA training camp in North Cotabato

NORTH Cotabato, Philippines - Army combatants on Monday hoisted the Philippine flag on a fortified enclave of the New People’s Army (NPA) in Magpet town, which they overran after a two-hour firefight.

Members of the Army’s 57th Infantry Battalion, the unit that initiated the restoration of government control over the NPA camp at Barangay Manobo in Magpet, found heavy stains of blood on the perimeter trenches and escape route of the rebels, indicating they suffered casualties. 

1Lt. Nash Sema, spokesman of the Army’s 57th Infantry Battalion, said members of the ethnic Manobo community in the area helped guide soldiers to the camp, which the NPAs had used as a springboard for their harsh enforcement of taxation on local peasants and in staging roadside bombings targeting both the military and villagers that refuse to pay them protection money.

Sema said improvised explosives used in more than a dozen NPA-initiated bombings in North Cotabato were fabricated in the captured camp, located on a strategic hill in Sitio Kisambit, overlooking farmlands of ethnic Manobo and Visayan settlers.

Barangay officials have confirmed that some 30 new NPA recruits, mostly adolescents, were undergoing training at the camp when it was raided by members of the 57th IB.

The NPA has been forcing farmers in North Cotabato to let their children join the group in exchange for protection, apart from the revolutionary taxes they ought to shell out on a monthly basis.

“Local folks helped us in the clearing of this NPA camp because they want their villages free from communist rebels,” Sema said.

Sema, citing feedback by barangay officials, said three “notorious amazons” whose names he declined to reveal pending proper validation, jointly managed the NPA camp.

He said their units in different North Cotabato towns are bracing possible retaliations for the 57th IB’s capture of the guerilla enclave.