Cop hurt in NPA ambush in Mountain Province

BAGUIO CITY, Philippines — New People's Army guerrillas ambushed police officers on patrol in Bauko, Mountain Province on Friday morning.

The attack was supposedly the rebel group’s "response to the directive of the National Operational Command of the NPA to launch military actions nationwide as part of the celebrations of the NPA’s 50th year anniversary."

Magno Udiao, spokesman of the Mountain Province-based Leonardo Pacsi Command said communist guerillas “engaged” a unit of the Regional Public Safety Battalion for about 15 minutes. Udiao said a police officer is believed to have been killed in the clash.

The Cordillera police disputed the report that an officer was killed but also disclosed that Patrolman Wilfredo Padawil was wounded in the rebel attack against members of the 1502nd Maneuver Company of Cordillera police’s Regional Mobile Force Battalion-15. They said the firefight involved 15 rebels.

Police believe some of the rebels were wounded in the brief clash "based on blood tracking in the area."

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Udiao described the RPSB as a police unit “specifically intended for counterinsurgency" and is used "as a machinery to silence the people's resistance and also enforce national oppression on the national minorities including the Igorots of the Cordillera."

Mountain Province rebels believe the RPSB "carries (this) mission in the guise of protecting the environment and national interest." 

They also said "the Department of Environment and Natural Resources in cahoots with these mercenary troops have been enforcing a total log ban policy and the crackdown on small-scale mines (while) they protect plunderous large-scale mines, logging, and energy businesses."

Udiao insisted that the indigenous people “have inherent rights to their ancestral lands and its resources including the trees, the minerals, and the waters.”