NPA ambush in Samar condemned

From Sun Star-Tacloban (Jun 1):  NPA ambush in Samar condemned

The government forces have heightened their pursuit operations against the perpetrators of the ambush on a police patrol car on Thursday afternoon in Samar province.

It occurred three days after New People’s Army (NPA) rebels perpetrated an ambush in far-flung village in Allacapan, Cagayan, killing eight police commandos of the PNP’s elite unit, the Special Action Force, and injuring seven others.

The rebels set off a roadside bomb and opened fire on a police patrol car carrying members of Paranas Municipal Police Station along the Maharlika Highway in Barangay Tagbayaon, Jiabong town in Samar.

Paranas police chief Doughlas Antonio Eloja, and his men PO3 Cayetano Abantao, PO2 Romulo Tabique and PO2 Rodrigo Agbon Jr., were en route to Catbalogan City, some eight kilometers northwest from the ambush site, to attend a court hearing when undetermined number of rebels detonated an improvised explosive device (IED) and sprayed the vehicle with gunfire. The four survived the ambush.

Police Regional Office Eastern Visayas (PRO8) director Elmer Ragadio Soria said policemen were able to maneuver towards the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology (BJMP) facility at nearby Barangay Lagundi, Catbalogan City.

Troops set up roadblocks and dispatched reinforcements to track down the perpetrators, said Soria.

In 2010, NPA launched a landmine attack at the villages of Catarman Northern Samar, killing eight policemen. The Efren Martires Command (EMC) of NPA in Eastern Visayas owned the responsibility.

Four months later, another landmine attacked by staged by the NPA in Catubig town, Northern Samar against the 63rd Infantry Battalion, resulting in the death of a 9-year-old boy and a soldier.

In July 2011, a soldier was killed when a group of 60 rebels ambushed a military convoy in Samar’s Paranas town using also improvised landmines that crippled the trucks that carries the soldiers.

Last year, a simultaneous attack staged by the rebels occurred in the various parts of Samar, killing some troops and innocent civilians.

In March 5, 2012, the 8th ID troops discovered the biggest production of improvised bombs in a secluded NPA explosives factory in Paranas town, where 44 improvised landmines, blasting caps and detonators were seized.

 Meanwhile, the NPA in Samar has not owned yet the Thursday’s ambush on Paranas cops and earlier denied they have used landmines in their previous attacks.

“The NPA uses command-detonated explosives, which are manually set off against a defined target and thus allowed in war. The NPA did not and has never used anti-personnel land mines which automatically explode when triggered by the victim, and is thus banned under international humanitarian law for causing needless casualties,” said Karlos Manuel, spokesman of EMC, in a statement.

http://www.sunstar.com.ph/tacloban/local-news/2013/06/01/npa-ambush-samar-condemned-285336