NPA leader charged for assault on tower

PALO, Leyte - The Samar police have filed charges of arson and destruction of property against Bernabe Alinay alias Kumander Gacoy, the communist guerrilla who led the raid on the relay station of Smart Communications in Catbalogan, Samar last Jan. 5.

Alinay, who remains at large, was tagged as the leader of 15 heavily armed guerrillas who attacked and burned the relay station after disarming a lone security guard.

Eastern Visayas police officials said the relay station was attacked after the Smart management failed to pay P300,000 to the New People's Army (NPA).

The regional intelligence office said the company has ignored the NPA's demand for "revolutionary taxes" for more than a year.

Police said Alinay and his men also took a cellular phone and destroyed expensive communications equipment, including large batteries, module rectifiers and radio transformers.

The P1-million relay tower was on a hillside three kilometers away from the provincial police headquarters and the Army's 8th Infantry Division at Camp Vicente Lukban in Barangay Maulong, Catbalogan.

After the raid, Senior Superintendent Domingo Reyes Jr., Eastern Visayas police director, dismissed Catbalogan police chief Oscar Cadiz and placed Superintendent Danilo Flordeliza, Samar police director, and the 70-man Catbalogan police force under investigation.

The raid was the second on a Smart facility in the region. Last Nov. 13, the NPA destroyed the company's parabolic satellite antenna in Barangay San Pablo, Ormoc City.

In another development, elements of the Army's 62nd Infantry Battalion overran two NPA camps in Loreto and San Luis towns in Agusan del Sur last Wednesday, the military said.

Lt. Gen. Edgardo Espinosa, chief of the Armed Forces' Southern Command, said soldiers found in the Loreto camp, which was overrun after a 30-minute gunbattle, 15 fortified bunkers, a multipurpose hall, personal belongings and some subversive documents that are valuable to Army intelligence.

He said two rocket-firing helicopter gunships were scouring the forest for the guerrillas.

A second training camp, where soldiers found anti-government propaganda material, was seized in the nearby town of San Luis.

Both camps were heavily laden with booby traps and mines and could accommodate about 500 people, the military said.

The military intensified its offensive against communist rebels after the National Democratic Front withdrew from peace negotiations with the government. -