MANILA – A Philippine Army officer and five suspected members of the communist New People’s Army (NPA), including two women, were slain in an encounter in a remote “barangay†(village) in Negros Occidental province in the Visayas, a military spokesman reported on Monday.
Also in the Visayas, police reported that still unidentified men hurled a hand grenade into a bakeshop in Iloilo City, owned by Mayor Jerry Trenas at 2 am Monday, injuring a private security guard.
Trenas said the bombing is politically motivated. He is running for congressman in Iloilo City’s lone legislative district against reelectionist Raul Gonzales Junior in the May 10 elections.
The father of Congressman Gonzales is Secretary Raul Gonzalez, the chief legal counsel of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and the official candidate for mayor of Iloilo City of the ruling Lakas-Kampi Christian Muslim Democrats.
Meanwhile, the military spokesman said the encounter between government forces and the NPA rebels occurred Sunday morning in a remote village in Cadiz City, Negros Occidental.
The spokesman said two of the five suspected NPA members slain, were women, also called “amazons†in military parlance.
The NPA is the armed wing of the underground Communist Party of the Philippines which has been waging an insurgency war against the government for more than 40 years, described as the longest in Asia and the Pacific.
According to the spokesman, the two Army platoons, led by the lieutenant, were on a security patrol when they spotted a group of heavily armed men in the village outside Cadiz City.
The Cadiz City encounter came a day after suspected NPA members ambushed a military patrol in Oriental Mindoro province in Southern Luzon on Saturday, killing 11 soldiers.
The spokesman said the soldiers were given full military honors on Monday at the Philippine Army headquarters in Camp Aguinaldo in suburban Quezon City before they were brought to their respective hometowns for burial.
The soldiers were on “routine†security patrol in the mountain town of Mansalay, Oriental Mindoro when they were ambushed,.
The spokesman also disclosed that ranking Army officers have ordered an investigation to determine whether there were blunders in the military operation that resulted in the ambush.
For instance, he said investigators have been ordered to determine why the soldiers conducted the operation at past 5 am Saturday, which made them visible to the NPA insurgents who are said to be active in the area.
At that time, the spokesman said the soldiers should have been resting or observing instead of being sent out on a mission which endangered their lives.
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