This question surfaced after a Nueva Ecija politician was alleged to have escorted ambulances reportedly provided by another politician from Aurora for suspected communist rebels who had figured in an encounter with members of the Army’s 702nd Infantry Brigade and the 70th Infantry Battalion in Sitio Salacsac in Dimatubo, San Luis, Aurora at about 6 a.m. last Saturday.
Col. Jovenal Narcise, commander of the 702nd IB, said the soldiers clashed with about 30 NPA guerrillas in Sitio Salacsac and found an M-16 rifle, a communications antenna and subversive documents after the rebels fled.
He said many of the rebels, led by Delfin Pimentel, alias Ka Medy, were believed to have been wounded. The military put up checkpoints in strategic routes in Aurora to intercept the fleeing rebels.
"Mysteriously, two local government ambulances - one with an approved trip ticket issued by a local government official from Aurora and another escorted by a local government official from Nueva Ecija — passed through the checkpoints a few hours after the encounter," Narcise said.
He said the guerrillas involved in the clash belonged to the same rebel band responsible for the killing of two soldiers and wounding of four others in an ambush in Barangay Canili in Ma. Aurora, Aurora last June 2.
Members of the 702nd IB and families of the slain soldiers have filed criminal charges against the NPA ambushers, and a complaint for human rights violations with the Commission on Human Rights.
Narcise said military intelligence agents are now monitoring hospitals and clinics in Aurora and Nueva Ecija where the wounded NPA guerrillas could have been brought.
Narcise said the NPA gets its funds largely from local sources, not from foreign sources.
"The NPA is earning more from its so-called ‘revolutionary taxes,’ than what the Abu Sayyaf had amassed from kidnappings," he said.
He claimed that the guerrillas get financial support from politicians who pay them for political access to rebel-influenced areas.
Narcise said the rebels also raise funds by asking P10 to P20 and a can of rice from every household in remote communities where they pass through.
"The funds raised from small households of farmers and other lowly folk are forwarded to the provincial and then to the regional party committees," he said. — Ding Cervantes