Five slain as NPA attacks cops, soldiers in Agusan

By CONG B. CORRALES
Associate Editor
and LITO RULONA
Correspondent

THE New People’s Army yesterday claimed to have killed five people in what it called as “tactical offensives” against the military and police in Agusan del Norte.

In a statement, Ka Omar Ibarra of the NPA’s Western Agusan del Norte-Agusan del Sur Subregional Command said communist guerrillas in north-central Mindanao successfully carried out the “tactical  offensives.”

He said one took place in the afternoon of Oct. 25 when rebels “simultaneously harassed” a police station in Barangay San Mateo in Butuan City, and a camp of the 23rd Infantry Battalion in Barangay Balungagan, Las Nieves town in Agusan del Norte.

Ibarra said the NPA rebels killed five people while wounded three others on the government side.

Ibarra said the offensives served as a retaliation for the “brutal attacks” by state agents against the NPA forces.

“These military actions would serve as another blow to the Duterte regime’s failure in defending itself from the intensification of the revolutionary movement that would eventually bury this regime and the bureaucrat-capitalist system to the dustbin of history,” reads part of Ibarra’s statement.

In another related development, the NPA lashed out at the government for deploying more soldiers and putting in place a new Army battalion in Bukidnon.

Ka Malem Mabini, NPA spokesperson for north-central Mindanao, said that for the past two weeks the newly installed 88th Infantry Battalion based in Maramag town has intensified the “militarization against the people and the revolutionary forces” in Bukidnon.

Mabini alleged that the new battalion is meant to clear the area for the expansion of foreign companies at the expense of agricultural lands.

He cited infrastructure projects like the Pulangui Dam V and the Maramag-Don Carlos airport.

According to reports, the Pulangi Dam V project would aggregate the rivers in Bukidnon and Cotabato, and would clear the 40,000 hectares of forest, agricultural and ancestral lands in 22 villages in the provinces of Bukidnon, Maguindanao and North Cotabato.

He said an estimated 2,800 Matigsalog tribal families in Kitaotao in Bukidnon and Tagabawas tribe in Cotabato would be displaced as a result of possible flooding because of the dam.

Mabini said some 6,700 families stand to lose their livelihood and, overall, over 800 thousand residents from Maramag, Bukidnon, Moro communities in Liguasan Marsh and in Cotabato City, Maguindanao would be adversely affected. He said they ar principally dependent on water from Pulangui River for irrigation, fishing and other livelihood.

Mabini said the Maramag-Don Carlos airport would also turn hundreds of hectares of farmland into an airfield.