20 NPA guerrillas charged for Negros ambush

BACOLOD CITY, Philippines – Police yesterday filed murder and frustrated murder charges against at least 20 New People’s Army (NPA) rebels suspected to be behind the ambush-slay of nine people in La Castellana, Negros Occidental last Jan. 27.

Senior Superintendent Celestino Guara Jr., acting Negros Occidental police director, said they filed nine counts of murder and 14 counts of frustrated murder against the NPA suspects, with a certain Magno Flores as the main respondent. 

Flores, reportedly the head of Squad 2 of the NPA rebels operating in central Negros, was tagged by witnesses as the leader of the ambush, which the military and police have dubbed as a “massacre of civilians.”

Guara said there were about nine members of Flores’ squad and another NPA unit that took part in the attack. 

He said the ambushers will also be charged with violation of the International Human Rights Law.

The NPA earlier had issued a statement claiming responsibility for the attack, saying it did not plan to stage the ambush, but only to disarm the policemen and members of the Barangay Peacekeeping Action Team (BPAT) in the group. 

In a voice-recorded statement furnished the media last Friday, JB Regalado, spokesman of the NPA’s Leonardo Panaligan Command, said BPAT members and barangay watchmen were being used by the police and military as spies against guerrillas in Barangays Puso and Cabacungan in La Castellana.

He said NPA rebels fired a warning shot to stop the truck bearing the victims but were fired at, triggering a shootout.

Eight of the nine fatalities in the ambush were buried over the weekend, with their families still crying for justice. The last fatality, PO1 Richard Canja, will be buried this Saturday.

The Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process (OPAPP) is also investigating the ambush-slay.

Two lawyers from OPAPP’s legal department yesterday went to Barangay Puso in La Castellana to talk to the victims’ families and the survivors, said Capt. Leo Christopher Cunanan, civil-military operations officer of the Army’s 303rd Infantry Brigade based in Murcia, Negros Occidental.

The Commission on Human Rights is also looking into the ambush-slay.