6 rebels wounded in Makilala town clash

NORTH COTABATO, Philippines  -   Six of the more than 30 communist rebels behind the burning of a P25-million worth rubber processing plant in Makilala town were wounded in a firefight with pursuing soldiers Wednesday, community leaders said.

The hostilities forced 85 peasant families to evacuate to safer areas.

Irate local executives have branded as “crime against humanity” the burning of a rubber processing plant that left 700 farm workers jobless.

The New People’s Army guerillas that raided last Sunday the plantation of the Standard Rubber Development Corp. in Barangay Talun-Talunan in Makilala also killed a farm worker and wounded another using an improvised explosive they set off as the victims responded to the fire scene carrying pails and a garden hose.

North Cotabato Gov. Emmylou Taliño-Mendoza, in an emailed statement, said the farm workers displaced stopped their children from going to school because they have  no other source of income.

“The real victims of the atrocity were the families, the children of the affected workers,” said Mendoza, who is chairperson of the inter-agency North Cotabato provincial peace and order council (PPOC).

Local officials in Makilala, North Cotabato’s top producer of raw and dried rubber bales, have called on the local police to file arson, murder and frustrated murder charges against the rebels that perpetrated the atrocity, led by Felix Armodia of the NPA’s Guerrilla Front 72.

Members of the Makilala municipal peace and order council have branded the burning of the rubber processing factory in Barangay Talun-Talunan as a “crime against humanity.”

1Lt. Nash Sema, spokesman of the Army’s 57th Battalion, said Armodia and his men clashed with pursuing soldiers in Cabilao area in Makilala two days after they attacked the rubber plantation.

A soldier, Sgt. Arnold Vigo, of the Bravo Company of 57th IB, was killed in the ensuing firefight.

Vigo and his companions were dispatched to Barangay Cabilao to check on reported sightings by villagers of Armodia and his followers, gathered at a forested spot, feasting on food they forcibly collected from villagers in the area.

The rebels opened fire at the approaching soldiers, provoking an encounter, which left six NPAs wounded, four of them adolescents.

Barangay folks identified four of the six wounded NPAs as Adel, Benhur, Noel and Chris, all in their early teens.