PAGADIAN CITY (Mindanao Examiner / Dec. 14, 2013) – New People’s Army rebels stormed a police headquarters on Saturday – the second in just two days in the southern Philippines – and seized assorted weapons, officials said.
Officials said the rebels, numbering about 30, disarmed policemen guarding the headquarters in Don Victoriano Chiongbian town in Misamis Occidental province. The raiders seized a machine gun, an M203 grenade launcher, seven automatic rifles and nine hand guns from the police arsenal before escaping towards Zamboanga del Sur province.
Troops sent to pursue the fleeing rebels clashed with the NPA band in the village of Bag-ong Tudela in Josefina town.
Captain Jefferson Somera, a spokesman for the 1st Infantry Division, has confirmed the fighting and said members of the 55thInfantry Battalion were dispatched to take down the rebels. “The fighting lasted over 25 minutes and we foiled the NPA plan to detonated landmines in the area to sow down the military pursuit,” he told the regional newspaper Mindanao Examiner.
He said in September, army troops killed a senior NPA commander, Henry Celajes, in a firefight in Misamis Occidental’s Tudela town. Celajes was the deputy secretary of the communist group in western Mindanao.
Rebel forces recently raided the police headquarters in Kibawe town in Bukidnon province near Misamis and killed and wounded 5 officers and carted at least 13 assorted weapons. The NPA has been fighting for decades for the establishment of a Maoist state in the country. (Mindanao Examiner)
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