2 NPAs killed in clash with soldiers in Butuan City

COTABATO CITY — Two members of the New People’s Army were killed in an encounter with soldiers in Barangay Los Angeles in Butuan City, Agusan del Norte on Tuesday, January 28.

Officials of the Army's 4th Infantry Division and Brig. Gen. Christopher Abrahano, director of the Police Regional Office-13,  separately confirmed on Thursday, January 30, the incident, which left two guerillas dead, both under the NPA’s Northeastern Mindanao Regional Committee (NEMRC).

Leaders of the NPA’s self-styled NEMRC are wanted for high-profile criminal cases, including multiple murder, extortion and large-scale trafficking of narcotics, that are pending in different courts in provinces and cities in Mindanao’s adjoining Regions 10 and 13.

Local officials, among them members of the multi-sector Butuan City Peace and Order Council, said the gunfight erupted when the two slain NPAs and their more than 10 companions opened fire on personnel of the 29th Infantry Battalion approaching their location in Sitio Dinakpan in Barangay Los Angeles from two directions.

Two teams of soldiers were dispatched to Sitio Dinakpan, a secluded area in Barangay Los Angeles, after hapless villagers complained about the presence of armed men in the area, collecting from them money and food at gunpoint.

Army Lt. Col. Mark Tabon, acting commander of the 29th IB, said the soldiers who figured in the gunfight found beside the cadavers of the dead guerillas an AK-47 assault rifle, a 5.56 Bushmaster rifle, explosives and keypad-type mobile phones needed in fabrication of blasting contraptions for home-made bombs that can be detonated from a distance.

The 29th IB immediately turned over the cadavers of the two NPAs to the Butuan City local government for its proper disposition.