‘Ka Roger’ warns of more attacks

New People’s Army (NPA) rebels will launch "more and bigger" attacks against the government next year.

Gregorio "Ka Roger" Rosal, NPA spokesman, said more recruits are joining the NPA as the rebel movement is "fast advancing" in the countryside.

"The Communist Party is stronger in all fronts now compared to what it was when it launched the rectification movement in 1992," he said.

Rosal said "rectification" refers to that period in the early 1980s when rebel leaders were locked in an intense power struggle over deviation of some of them from the Maoist dogma of protracted war from the countryside to the cities.

Rosal said President Arroyo’s rejection of a Christmas and New Year ceasefire was apparently dictated by the US government which had tagged the NPA and Communist Party of the Philippines as foreign terrorist organizations.

The military’s continuing all-out war against the NPA is a product of Mrs. Arroyo’s "desperation" to remain in power in the face of her rapidly declining popularity, Rosal added.

In Ilocos Sur, two suspected NPA rebels were killed in a two-hour firefight with Army troops last Monday in Barangay Cacadiran in Cabugao, the hometown of self-exiled communist leader Jose Ma. Sison.

Maj. Gen. Rodolfo Garcia, Northern Luzon Command (Nolcom) chief, identified the fatalities as Nestor Sosa alias Ka Clyde and a certain Ka Arman.

Sosa is known to military intelligence as the leader of the NPA’s Mass Work Unit in Ilocos Sur, he added.

Quoting Lt. Alberto Flores, operations officer of the Army’s 50th Infantry Battalion, Garcia said Sosa and his men had just had a drinking spree in a house in Barangay Cacadiran when troops arrived after receiving a tip from a "concerned member" of the community.

The rebels went on a drinking session after extorting money and goods from residents, he added.

Garcia said the soldiers waited for Sosa and his men to come out of the house before attacking to prevent civilians from being caught in a crossfire.

No soldier was reported killed in the ensuing firefight, he added.

In Oriental Mindoro , three NPA rebels were killed Wednesday when their band clashed with Army Special Forces in Barangay San Cristobal in Victoria town, some 42 kilometers south of Calapan City.

No casualty was reported on the military side.

Troops from the Army’s 204th Infantry Brigade and Victoria municipal policemen were immediately deployed to block the possible escape routes of the rebels.

As the rebels fled, they reportedly carried some of their dead comrades back to their camp in the hinterlands at the boundary of Occidental and Oriental Mindoro. – Benjie Villa, Joe Leuterio, AFP