Part of the NPA camp overrun by the PAF-PNP in Sagada, Mt. Province, bellieved to be the staging area for earlier ambuscades on police personnel. PHOTO BY PRO-CORDILLERA
With Philippine Air Force helicopter-gunships providing cover, a composite government team overran Friday a key rebel camp in Barangay Aguid, Sagada, Mt. Province, that is believed to have been used as staging area for earlier high-profile attacks by the New People's Army on police personnel.
Chief Supt. Benjamin Magalong, director of the Police Regional Office-Cordillera (PRO-COR), said Saturday they confirmed intelligence information that the Kilusang Larangan Guerilla (KLG) Marco Command operating in the province had set up camp in the area for several months now.
Magalong said the camp “is being used by the communist rebels as staging area for their previous attacks on police personnel in the province…[it] is reportedly well-equipped, is being used by the NPA as its training ground for its forces in preparation for the staging of a massive attack against government forces deployed in the province for peacekeeping activities.”
PAF sent two MG520 attack helicopters equipped with rockets and machineguns for two sorties, one at 8 a.m., the second at 10 a.m., before the rebel camp was completely subdued.
The last attack from the rebels had come just last Thursday, when an undetermined number of NPAs ambushed a police convoy in Barangay Aguid, wounding two policemen.
It was the second attack in the province since the June 28 ambush in Tadian town that killed a police officer and injured 10 police trainees.
On May 27, eight members of the police’s elite unit, Special Action Force (SAF), were killed and six others wounded after rebels ambushed them in Allacapan, Cagayan.
The capture of the NPA camp on Friday was achieved by the police and military units, especially the 54th Infantry Battalion, "without suffering from further casualties and injuries, except for the two policemen who were injured in the initial attempt to overrun the camp Thursday morning,” Magalong noted.
Police Officer 1 Primo Marcelo and PO1 Romel T. Sagot “were injured after they were met with heavy gunfire by more or less 35 heavily armed communist rebels within the camp,” he added.
Security forces retrieved from the NPA camp subversive documents, medical kits and improvised explosive devices (IED) “installed along the route and round the camp, intended to inflict mass casualties on the operating forces of the government.”
“To avoid mass casualties and further injury to the operating personnel, PROCOR [the Police Regional Office-Cordillera] requested for Close Air Support delivered along the route towards the camp and its surrounding areas to soften the enemy fire and disarm through munitions the Improvised Explosive Device (IED) scattered by the enemy prior to the clearing and documentation of the camp,” Magalong said.
http://www.interaksyon.com/article/69766/soldiers-cops-overrun-key-npa-camp-in-cordillera
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