NPA torches logging equip’t, holds 7 hostage

Gunmen believed to be members of the communist New People’s Army (NPA) burned down several logging equipment worth millions of pesos in an inner Isabela town on Thursday, a military report said yesterday.

On the same day another group of armed men, also suspected to be NPA rebels, held hostage a seven persons, including two children, in a remote section of Nueva Vizcaya province, the military also reported.

Reportedly, the seven persons held hostage by the rebels would have been burned by their captors but were rescued by another Army group, the military report said.

According to a report by the Army’s 5th Infantry Division (ID) based in Isabela province, the 10 trucks and bulldozers used by the Montealto Logging Co. which the rebels burned in Barangay San Miguel, Echague town around 7 a.m Thursday were estimated to be worth some P15 million.

Col. Loreto Magundayao, commanding officer of the 5th ID’s Civil-Military Operations battalion, the company’s workers were even forced by the rebels, reportedly including several Aetas, to watch the equipment burn.

The rebels afterward fled on another logging truck of the firm and headed to nearby Barangay Dicamay Uno in Jones town.

The military said the NPA has long been doing the practice of burning property owned by a firm whose owners refused the rebel group’s demand to pay so-called “revolutionary taxes.”

The military said in their extortion activities, the rebels have been demanding a payment of P1 million for each bulldozer owned by a construction firm and P2 per board foot of logs possessed by a logging firm, which make for big sums of money being collected by the NPA.

Just six days earlier, 50 armed men also believed to be NPA guerrillas ambushed a seven-man team led by Sr. Insp. Alfonso Derraco, Benito Soliven police chief, in one of the remote villages of said town, resulting to Derraco’s death and the wounding of the others.

Meanwhile, seven civilians, including two children, were rescued by soldiers of the Army’s 81st Infantry Battalion (IB) from suspected NPA rebels just as they were about to burn the house where the hostages were forced into in a remote village in mountainous Kayapa town last Thursday.

Based on field reports received by Lt. Col. Ramon Linasan, commanding officer of the 81st IB based in Sto. Niño III, San Jose City, Nueva Ecija, which is under the command of the 7th ID based in Fort Magsaysay, Palayan City, elements of the battalion’s Bravo Company under one Lt. Piñez engaged a group of NPA rebels, including two women fighters, in a gun battle near Alang Salacsac village, Kayapa.

After several minutes into the firefight, the rebels were forced to retreat but the government troops kept pursuing them until they reached Sta. Rosa village around 3 p.m. There, the Army soldiers were shocked to see the rebels forcing several residents into a hut which they were in the process of burning.

The Army troops then again engaged the rebels in a shootout, eventually overpowered the guerrillas and rescued the hostages.

The rescued hostages, mostly members of the Quilino family, including five-year-old Gemma Deneng and her six-year-old sister Femy Ann, were taken to the village hall for first aid treatment.

Most of Nueva Vizcaya is within the area of operations of the Gamu town, Isabela-based Army 5th ID, except for the southern towns of Alfonso Castañeda, Sta. Fe, Aritao, Kayapa, Dupax del Norte and Dupax del Sur, which are under the Army’s 7th ID. –Ted Boehnert, Daily Tribune