CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY (Mindanao Examiner / Jan. 22, 2013) – Communist rebels, disguised as government soldiers, stormed a small village in the southern Philippines on Tuesday and looted houses owned by an army soldier and a retired infantryman and a policeman, officials said.
Officials said about 25 New People’s Army rebels headed to the village in the town of Kinoguitan in Misamis Oriental province, north of Mindanao Island, and barged into the houses of PFC. Benjamin Timbal, of the 58th Infantry Battalion, and retired soldier Eliseo Salvacion and former policeman Ananias Requerme.
“They looted the houses while the families of these people pleaded to stop, but it all fell on deaf ears and they ransacked everything at gunpoint,” Lt. Col. Eugene Osias, a spokesman for the 4th Infantry Division, told the regional newspaper Mindanao Examiner.
He said the rebels fled the village after looting the houses. “The civilians – women and children in the village – were severely traumatized by the acts of the NPA,” he said.
The soldier was on a patrol at the time of the NPA raid and the two retired soldier and policeman were also out of their house, according to Osias.
He said government troops were sent to track down the rebels, who are fighting for the establishment of a separate communist state in the country.
There was no immediate statement from the NPA, but the rebel group is still holding a soldier and policeman – Jesrel Colanggo and Ruel Pasion – who were both captured January 17 at a checkpoint in the village of Mangloy in Laak town in Compostela Valley province.
Rigoberto Sanchez, a rebel spokesman, the 2 prisoners are being treated well. He said the soldier is a member of the 60th Infantry Battalion which the NPA accused as behind the series of extrajudicial killings of innocent civilians in the province.
The capture of the soldier and policeman came a day after security forces attacked an NPA team in the village of Binondo in nearby Davao Oriental’s Baganga town and sparking a fierce fight that left a still undetermined number of soldiers dead and wounded. (Mindanao Examiner)
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