2 cops hurt in Sultan Kudarat bombing

SULTAN KUDARAT, Philippines - Two policemen were badly injured on Monday in a bombing in Columbio, Sultan Kudarat the provincial police said.

The wounded policemen, P01 Ritchie Cabillo and P01 Angel Vilo, who both sustained shrapnel wounds in different parts of their bodies, were rushed by barangay officials and soldiers to a hospital for medication.

In a statement Tuesday, Senior Superintendent Rex dela Rosa, director of the Sultan Kudarat provincial police, said the victims were riding a motorcycle together, en route to Barangay Bantugan, a secluded district in Columbio, when the rebels set off a roadside bomb planted along a farm-to-market road as they passed by.

The two policemen, both members of the Provincial Public Safety Battalion, were to proceed to Bantugan to join companions in verifying the reported sightings of New People’s Army (NPA) guerillas in the area.

Interior barangays in southeast of Columbio are known lairs of NPAs, which government forces are trying to drive away.

Peasant communities in the area are complaining of the rebels’ mulcting of “protection money” and interference in the affairs of their barangay governments.