The commander of the army’s patrol base and four regular militiamen were killed when New People’s Army (NPA) rebels attacked a military outpost in a former rebel base in Misamis Oriental Sunday dawn, an army report said Monday.
Killed were army Sgt. Dante Laong, and regular militiamen Joel Tandayon, Miguel Lugar, Ali Saguiway, and Mauli Bacus. Wounded were Sonny Tandayon, Jonathan Castillo,and Ranilo Lindahay,all assigned at the army patrol base in Sitio Lantad, Barangay Kibanban, Misamis Oriental.
Lt. Col. Leo Bongosia, commander of the army’s 4th Infantry Division’s Civil-Military Operations, said that about 60 NPA rebels attacked the army patrol base past 1:00 a.m. Sunday resulting in a fierce firefight.
He said that Sgt. Laong, the detachment commander, was killed in the ensuing gun battle.
The rebels also carted away the firearms of the militiamen before fleeing toward the mountain forest before the army’s reinforcement arrived in the area.
The rebels reportedly called the civilian-farmers around Lantad to retrieve the bodies of the slain soldier and the militiamen while others secured the wounded for treatment, Bongosia said.
He said that Sitio Lantad was the stronghold of the NPAs in the 80s and the regional headquarters of the Northern Mindanao Revolutionary Party Committee of the Communist Party of the
The fabled periphery of Lantad was the scene of fierce gun battles between the NPA rebels and the government’s troopers where hundreds of lives, including innocent civilians, were lost.
The military overran the enchanted farming villages in the mid 90s.
In 2000, the government constructed farm to market roads in Lantad to make its rich agricultural products accessible to the nearby coastal town of
Bongosia said that the military has established a strong presence in the area by putting up a patrol base to secure the farming village from the harassments of communist rebels who, most of the time, attacked innocent civilians and the military outpost in a bid to regain the NPA’s lost ground.
He said that the NPA rebels would only be frustrated since the government and the military would never allow the rebels to, once again, sow terror to innocent farmers and civilians in Lantad and Kibanban, all outskirt farming villages in Balingasag.
“After all, the civilians and farmers in the former rebel stronghold of Lantad already learned the harrowing lesson of terror and atrocities during the years of the NPA rebels’ excesses in the area,” Bongosia added.
http://www.pna.gov.ph/index.php?idn=2&sid=&nid=2&rid=568741
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