NPA leader captured, soldier wounded in separate clashes in Quezon

By Ronron
August 16, 2007

A suspected local leader of the New People’s Army (NPA) in Quezon province was captured while a government soldier was wounded in two separate clashes last Wednesday in said province, a military spokesman said yesterday (Thursday).

According to Captain Carlo Ferrer, information officer of the Philippine Army’s 2nd Infantry Division based in Tanay, Rizal, the first clash happened at 4:40 am at Sitio Pulo, Barangay Capulungan in Calauag town.

Ferrer said elements of the 21st Division Reconnaissance Company under the 74th Infantry Battalion of the Philippine Army were conducting combat operations in the area when they encountered some 30 NPA rebels.

“It was learned from a resident of said place that there are NPA rebels staying there, conducting extortion activities,” Ferrer said in Filipino.

He said the firefight resulted in the capture of a certain “Ka Alex,” a former platoon leader of the Plaguer Magtangol Front Committee and now a Barangay Revolutionary Committee Secretary of the NPA in said town.

A “fiberglass banca” allegedly owned by the suspected rebels was also recovered.

Later at around 7:10 am, another encounter between government troops and suspected communist rebels transpired in the tri-boundaries of Barangays Villa Victoria, Bungahan, and M. H. Del Pilar in Gumaca town, Ferrer said.

Ferrer said troops from the Reconnaissance Squad of the Army’s 76th Infantry Battalion were verifying reports that NPA members are collecting revolutionary taxes in said area when they engaged the more or less 30 rebels.

“The 15-minute firefight resulted to the slightly wounding of Private First Class Lawrence Cabulos in the government side,” Ferrer said.

Ferrer said it is believed that an undetermined number of rebels were also wounded in the said incident.

The 7,100-strong NPA has been waging guerilla warfare in the countryside in the last 38 years with the aim of toppling the democratic form of government.

Peace talks between the movement and the government bogged down in August 2004 after the former was tagged as a terrorist by the governments of the United States and the European Union.

The government had said it hopes to crush the movement by 2010 when President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo ends her term./DMS