1 killed as rival rebels clash

SASMUAN, Pampanga — The conflict between two rival communist groups continues in this province as the Rebolusyonaryong Hukbo ng Bayan (RHB) bared yesterday the killing of a guerrilla of the New People’s Army (NPA) and the capture of two others in a clash in Barangay Bangkal here over the weekend.

RHB spokesman Red Olalia said in a statement that the Bartolome Quizon Commando Unit of the RHB "encountered a unit of the counter-revolutionary, terrorist, fanatic Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP)-NPA cult in Barangay Bangkal at around 8 p.m. last Dec. 9."

The commando unit was named after the top RHB commander, alias Ka Joe Bay, who was killed by NPA members in his home in Mexico town last Dec. 4 as a form of death penalty imposed on him for his alleged connivance with the military and the police in operations against the NPA, among other reasons.

The NPA is the armed unit of the CPP while the RHB is the armed unit of the Marxist-Leninist Party of the Philippines (MLPP) which broke away from the CPP in 1998.

But the RHB statement said that the clash in Bangkal was "not a retaliation for the CPP-NPA’s treacherous and dastardly murder of Ka Joe Bay," adding, however, that "definitely, the MLPP-RHB would exact justice for the crimes and other anti-people and counter-revolutionary schemes committed by the CPP-NPA which has degenerated into a pseudo-revolutionary fanatic cult that is hell-bent an annihilating all those who dare oppose their ill will."

The statement said one NPA member was killed and two more captured by the RHB during the clash, but their identities were not disclosed. The gunfight, the statement added, lasted an hour.

The RHB said that the NPA unit it encountered last Dec. 9 was the same unit that was "responsible for the ambush last February of the RHB squad in Orani, Bataan where Comrade Jerry was killed and three others were wounded."

"The two captives (in the clash here) will be tried by the revolutionary court for their involvement in the said ambush and other crimes their unit has committed against the masses in Bataan and the coastal barrios of Pampanga," the RHB also said.

The RHB and the NPA have also been clashing in their "revolutionary tax collections" in this province and other parts of Central Luzon.