Reds attack Silay airport site

BACOLOD CITY — About 50 communist guerrillas attacked a Japanese-funded international airport being built in Silay City Saturday, destroying construction equipment with bombs and seizing guns from guards, police said.

The New People’s Army (NPA) rebels did not harm any workers in the attack on the sprawling site in the Negros Occidental city, but the attack could delay completion of the project by several months, police said.

"This is an act of terrorism, an act of economic sabotage," said Superintendent Celestino Guara, Silay City police chief.

The Maoist guerrillas, disguised as policemen and armed with assault rifles, barged into the construction site shortly after midnight, disarmed guards then destroyed a computerized cement-making facility and a standby power generator using homemade bombs and kerosene, Guara said.

The guerrillas fled after seizing 18 pistols and three shotguns from civilian guards.

Engineers of Hanjin Construction Company, the Korean subcontractor, and Filipino workers who live at the site were not harmed, he said.

Engineers of Takenaka Joint Ventures, the Japanese contractor, were staying at a hotel away from the site.

Army troops and policemen were trying to pursue the attackers.

The P5-billion airport being constructed on a 187-hectare site in Barangay Bagtic is being funded by a loan from the Japan Bank for International Cooperation.

Authorities are aiming to open the facility in the first quarter of 2007 to boost trade and tourism in Western Visayas.

The attack damaged equipment worth P25 million, Guara said, quoting people involved in the project.

Guara said the motive could be linked to the NPA’s efforts to extort money from the Japanese and South Korean contractors.

Silay City Mayor Carlo Gumban appealed to the NPA to stop attacking the site, saying the airport would benefit the entire province.

The NPA has about 7,200 fighters operating in five percent of all villages nationwide and attack rural troops, police and businesses who refuse their extortion demands, according to the military.

Two years ago the rebels withdrew from Norwegian-brokered peace talks on ending 37 years of insurgency, saying the Arroyo administration was not making efforts to remove them from US and European lists of terrorist organizations. — Antonieta Lopez, Cecille Suerte Felipe and AP