The military truck blasted by an NPA command-detonated landmine in Matanao, Davao del Sur, in which seven soldiers were killed and eight wounded. (AFP)
Communist rebels on Thursday said nine men arrested by following the New People’s Army raid on the police station of Matanao town in Davao del Sur are civilians.
In the wake of Monday’s raid, in which two policemen were killed and three others wounded, authorities said nine alleged rebels were captured at a police checkpoint in Barangay Savoy, still in Matanao.
But in a statement, Dencio Madrigal, commander of the NPA’s Valentin Palammine Command, said Renante Urot, Joey Alberca, Rufoboy Gama, Laudemer Gama, Noel Morangit, Roger Natonton, Julio Sales, John Rey Pabillo and Christopher Sales were “hapless civilians” on their way to attend a fiesta.
Madrigal also said the early morning raid on the police station, which lasted “less than 10 minutes,” netted for the rebels seven M16 rifles and several ammunition vests, two 9 mm pistols, a caliber .45 pistol, and two handheld radios.
He confirmed that they lost two fighters.
Seven soldiers, including a junior officer, of the Army’s 39th Infantry Battalion were also killed and eight others wounded when their truck was hit by a command-detonated landmine on their way to join operations against the retreating NPA raiders.
Madrigal said the Matanao police were legitimate targets of the NPA, accusing them of being “notorious coddlers of illegal drug pushers and other criminal syndicates” as well as protectors, along with the Army, of the mining firm Glencore Xstrata, which the rebel commander claimed is “poised to continue to exploit the nearly 100,000 hectares of mining-rich ancestral lands of Lumad B’laans and peasants in the region.”
http://www.interaksyon.com/article/82637/9-nabbed-after-rebel-raid-on-davao-del-sur-police-station-civilians---npa
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