NPA ambush kills 5 soldiers

Five Army engineers were killed in an ambush by communist rebels in Davao Oriental last Tuesday, the military said yesterday.

The engineers, from the 534th Engineer Battalion of the 55th Engineer Brigade, were on their way to a road construction project in Baganga town when their dump truck hit a landmine, Lt. Gen. Roy Kyamko, chief of the military’s Southern Command, told reporters.

An undetermined number of heavily armed New People’s Army (NPA) guerrillas then opened fire from both sides of the road. Two soldiers were wounded.

Troops escorting the engineers engaged the rebels in a brief gunbattle and apparently wounded some of them. Bloodstains were found at the site, the military added.

The NPA, which claims to have about 13,500 fighters, is the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), which has been battling for a Marxist state for over 30 years.

NPA attacks usually target military positions and camps that are lightly defended and remote, as well as business establishments that refuse to pay extortion money. – Edith Regalado, John Unson