Reds kill 12 in attack on logging firm

COMMUNIST rebels attacked a logging company and killed 12 security forces in Surigao del Sur, the military said yesterday.

Maj. Michele Anayron, spokesman of the Philippine Army’s 4th Infantry Division, said that more than 100 guerrillas of the New Peoples Army’s Front 31 raided the Surigao Development Corp. compound in Pakwan village.

Three members of the Citizen’s Armed Forces Geographical Unit, guarding the company’s compound, fought the rebels but got killed. They were identified as Dionisito Luces, Edmundo Careño and Hilarion Agudo.

PO2 Rodolfo Medrano of the 405th Provincial Police Mobile Group, who helped the militia, was also killed in the firefight.

The NPA guerrillas then triggered a land mine to explode under a military and police convoy that was responding to calls by the police for reinforcement, Anayron said.

Killed in the blast were Corporals Gartin Plaza and Mohamad Kair Abdurasic, Privates First Class Kenneth Bactong, Dennis Garfin, Charlito Pico and Jose Belascuan, and Privates Raul Paquibot and Charles Orit.

Anayron said the firefight lasted for more than seven hours. The rebels withdrew after more soldiers and police arrived. One dead rebel was recovered from the scene of the encounter.

Based on “human intelligence” on the ground, 10 more rebels were killed in the firefight, Anayron said.

The rebels burned the logging company’s trucks, bulldozers, payloaders and light vehicles, the military said.

The police said the raid was likely related to the “revolutionary tax” the NPA has imposed on private and government businesses in the area. –Florante S. Solmerin, Manila Standard Today