NPAs attack police outpost, Army detachment

TACLOBAN CITY — The New People’s Army (NPA) has stepped up its attacks around the country, assaulting a police outpost at a government-run geothermal power plant in Ormoc City, Leyte, and an Army detachment in Laguna.

Col. Restituto Santos, commanding officer of the Army’s 19th Infantry Battalion, said 30 NPA rebels attacked the outpost of the Regional Mobile Group at the Maragundong-B plant of the Philippine National Power Corp.’s Tongonan geothermal power plant at about 4 a.m. yesterday.

Santos said the two policemen manning the outpost, PO2 Joel Perez and PO3 Noli Quero, were not missing as earlier reported.

"They were outnumbered so they had no choice but to withdraw," he said, adding that the two lawmen returned six hours later to their outpost, some five kilometers away from the Maragundong-B plant.

He said the attack left five bullet holes on the power plant’s building.

In Laguna, meanwhile, some 20 guerrillas swooped down on an Army detachment in Barangay Duhat, Cavinti town before dawn yesterday.

Brig. Gen. Efren Orbos, deputy commander of the Army’s 2nd Infantry Division based in Tanay, Rizal, said the 20 soldiers manning the detachment repulsed the NPA attackers.

Orbon said the soldiers did not pursue the rebels, fearing that a separate NPA group could be waiting in ambush, as what happened during an earlier attack on a coal-fired power plant in Calaca, Batangas. — With Roberto Dejon and Rene Alviar