2 NPAs in mayor’s slay identified

CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY, Philippines – Police have identified two New People’s Army (NPA) guerrillas involved in the July 2 ambush-killing of Mayor Mario Okinlay of Impasug-ong, Bukidnon.

Senior Superintendent David Umbao, regional deputy police director, said the suspects – brothers Joven and Efren Yanggo – belong to Front Committee 89 of the NPA’s Northern Mindanao Regional Committee.

In a statement last Saturday, the NPA owned up to the killing of Okinlay who it accused of committing anti-people and anti-insurgency activities.

Superintendent Isagani Genabe, Region 10 police director, said police units are working round the clock to arrest the suspects and give justice to the Okinlay family.

Hundreds of peace advocates joined Impasug-ong municipal employees and supporters of Okinlay in an indignation rally Monday, calling for swift justice for the mayor’s death.

Okinlay was leading a convoy of municipal employees, escorted by soldiers and policemen, from a medical mission in a remote village when an NPA sniper’s bullet felled him. He died while being treated a few hours after the ambush.

Allan Juanito, the NPA’s North Central Mindanao spokesman, said in the statement that Okinlay’s killing should serve notice to local officials in the region of the consequences of their counter-revolutionary activities.

Juanito said they had given warnings to Okinlay, but he ignored these.