More troops to go after NPAs in Mindanao

The Armed Forces has beefed up its forces in areas in Mindanao where New People’s Army (NPA) rebels have lately heightened their attacks on telecommunications facilities and police and military detachments.

This developed as at least 30 suspected NPA guerrillas raided before dawn yesterday the base of Sagittarius Mining Corp. (SMI) in Kiblawan, Davao del Sur.

Chief Superintendent Andres Caro II, Southern Mindanao police director, said the rebels burned a drilling machine of the United Drilling Philippines, reportedly a partner of SMI, at the mining firm’s base in Barangay Kimlawis, Kiblawan town.

Reports said two soldiers were wounded in the a 30-minute clash with the fleeing rebels.

Lt. Col. Ernesto Torres, the Armed Forces’ public affairs chief, said additional forces were deployed last week to the Eastern Mindanao Command to  better respond to the NPA atrocities.

He, however, declined to say how many soldiers were brought in, but said they included regular infantry troops and elite commandos, backed up by armored vehicles.

They are deployed in areas, particularly Compostela Valley, where rebels have lately been active, Torres said.

“We have identified the areas where the terrorist activities (have increased). We are augmenting our forces in (these) areas so we could at least thwart their future actions,” he said.

But Torres said the military’s move does not mean that the NPA is gaining strength in these areas, adding that the attacks show the rebels are getting desperate and need to project that they are still a force to reckon with.

“Reports that we have say that their numbers are dwindling, and their front committees are also being reduced, so we are looking at this as a dire attempt on the part of the NPA to project strength despite their dwindling numbers,” he said.

Torres said more militiamen may be enlisted in these areas, especially civilians who, according to him, have openly expressed their desire to fight the rebels.

He said the insurgents heightened their activities following the recent capture of one of their main camps in Bukidnon, where bomb-making components and other equipment were seized.

“Some of them (local folk) are growing a bit impatient about the NPA, so they volunteer. Indigenous people are bonding together and (saying) they are willing to support. There are others who want to go beyond verbal support for the military or providing information; they are volunteering to arm themselves,” Torres said.

President Arroyo has given the Armed Forces until 2010 to defeat the Maoist rebel group, which has been waging a decades-long communist insurgency in the countryside, considered the longest running in Asia. – With Edith Regalado