SOMO stays despite ambush of Marine soldiers in Palawan – Esperon

By Ronron
December 17, 2007

The Philippine government is not lifting its declaration of a Suspension of Offensive Military Operations (SOMO) against the communist rebels despite the death of three Marine soldiers on Sunday following an ambush in Palawan province.

Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) chief of staff Gen. Hermogenes Esperon, Jr. told reporters Monday at Camp Aguinaldo that the SOMO “will go on,” saying they will not be discouraged by the ambush incident.

“This will not discourage us from continuing with the announced suspension of military operations. We will go after them. In fact, this is provided for in the SOMO guidelines, which still directs our troops to go after lawless elements, to patrol around camps and to secure communities,” Esperon said.

“The SOMO goes on up to January 6,” he added.

Military spokesmen said the three slain elements of the 9th Marine Battalion Landing Team (MBLT) were supposed to go on marketing when attacked by at most 20 rebels at Barangay Binga, San Vicente town past 6am Sunday.

They were reportedly in civilian clothes, unarmed and just on foot.

The ambush happened on the first day of the 22-day SOMO declared unilaterally by the government.

“While we are said that this might be the response of the New People’s Army, then that’s all to their lookout. We will just let them be… That’s the character anyway of the NPA. They are terrorists,” Esperon said.

The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) spokesman, Gregorio “Ka Roger” Rosal, in a statement yesterday, owned up the ambush, saying that the “Marines were ambushed for their armed transgression into known revolutionary territory.”

“The Palawan ambush was a necessary course of action in the face of continuing offensive military operations by the AFP and the Arroyo regime’s hypocritical declaration of a sham 22-day unilateral ceasefire, which supposedly started yesterday,” Rosal said.

Rosal contradicted the claim of the AFP that the slain soldiers were in civilian clothes and unarmed.

“Marine soldiers are definitely always armed – with handguns, at the minimum – when they step outside their detachments and camps especially in known areas of operations of the NPA, even when they go out to prepare supplies for their military operations,” Rosal said.

He went on to urge “all other units of the NPA to launch more tactical offensives against units of the (AFP) and other armed enemy forces that continuing to intrude into revolutionary territory and conduct military operations against the NPA and the revolutionary masses.”

Esperon said it is lamentable that the NPA is reciprocating their SOMO this way since their purpose was to make “everybody feel the yuletide season, and the difference between violence and peace.”/DMS