NPA owns up fatal Marine ambush in Mindanao

ZAMBOANGA CITY: Communist rebels on Wednesday owned up the deadly ambush they claimed killed at least seven Philippine Marines in Sultan Kudarat, a spokesman for the New People’s Army (NPA) said.

Dencio Madrigal, NPA spokesman, said the attack targeted members of the 2nd Marine Company of the Marine Battalion Landing Team 8 in the village of Hinalaan, Kalamansig town where troops were pursuing a large group of rebels on Tuesday.

“Seven Marine troops were killed while several others severely wounded in the offensive carried out as a punitive action against the elite Marine force that for several years now functioned as paid guard dogs protecting the destructive enterprises of land grabber bourgeois- comprador David Consunji, especially his open-pit mining David M. Consunji, Inc.,” Madrigal said.

He also denied published reports by other newspaper that six rebels had been killed by soldiers in the fighting. “Not one of the NPA units in Sultan Kudarat was hit by their bombardment. The AFP’s artillery strike, however, managed to damage farms and forest covers in the hinterlands of Hinalaan village and adjacent barrios. Apart from indiscriminate bombardment, reinforcement ground troops of the AFP have begun to sow further terror in Kalamansig town,” the spokesman said.

Madrigal said many houses were destroyed in the military offensive and one civilian was taken by the soldiers on suspicion that he had been supporting the rebels.

There was no immediate reaction from the military and Consunji on Madrigal’s allegations as of Wednesday.