Rebels torch trucks of firm in NCotabato town

NORTH COTABATO, Philippines  – Communist rebels set on fire road-building equipment of a private firm constructing a water catchment project in Arakan town Sunday, just five days after the same group burned six trucks of a banana firm in a nearby town.

1Lt. Nash Sema, spokesman of the Army’s 57th Infantry Battalion, said the New People’s Army guerrillas  barged into the equipment depot of the Davao Concreting Product Corp. in Barangay Ladayon in Arakan, disarmed security guards, and asked for “protection money.”

Failing to locate the manager of the construction firm, the NPAs, armed with assault rifles and handguns and clad in combat uniforms, set on fire a bulldozer, a road grader and two Isuzu Elf trucks parked near the makeshift office of the firm.

“Apparently the arson attack was meant to pressure the construction outfit into paying the NPA protection money. The firm has  (refused to give) any amount," Sema told The Star.

The rebels fled toward a forested hinterland north of Arakan before  soldiers and policemen arrived in the area.

Local officials have tagged the NPA’s Guerrilla Front 53 as behind the attack.

The military had earlier blamed the same group for the burning of three multi-million prime mover trucks attached to trailers and three other hauler trucks in an attack last August 14 at the Sumifru banana plantation in a remote barangay at the border of North Cotabato’s adjoining Matalam and Antipas municipalities.

The agricultural company exports Cavendish bananas to Japan and the Middle East.

Communist rebels torched  Sumifru's trucks after the company  refused to pay “protection money.”