New People’s Army guerrillas stand in formation at their camp in the Sierra Madre mountain range in this photo taken on July 30, 2017. —AFP FILE PHOTO
LUCENA CITY — The New People’s Army (NPA) strongly refuted the military report that a supposed guerrilla training camp in the Sierra Madre mountain range in northern Quezon had been overrun by government forces.
“The military is once again lying through their teeth,” Eliza “Ka Ely” De la Guerra, NPA-Apolonio Mendoza Command-Quezon deputy spokesperson, said in a statement Thursday.
De la Guerra insisted that no such incident happened.
“The truth is that there is no NPA training camp in the said area and no encounter took place between the NPA forces and government soldiers and policemen,” she said.
On Wednesday, Capt. Patrick Jay Retumban, public affairs chief of the Army’s 2nd Infantry Division, reported that a combined Army and police force successfully invaded an alleged NPA training camp in the mountain village of Canaway in General Nakar, Quezon.
The military said the camp was overrun after a 10-minute firefight against an estimated 30 NPA rebels.
The government forces also recovered blasting caps, improvised explosive devices, radio equipment, other war materials, and documents, the report said.
De la Guerra accused military officials of “spewing lies to deceive the people into believing that they are winning in their war against the NPA forces in the Southern Tagalog region.”
“When in fact they are losing in every engagement with NPA forces in Mt. Sierra Madre Mountain ranges,” the rebel insisted.
De la Guerra claimed that last month alone, the government forces suffered two casualties in a sniping operation staged by the communist guerrillas.
The Red fighter alleged that one soldier was killed in Barangay Umiray in Gen. Nakar last April 18 and another killed in the same village last April 26.
She assailed the military “for propagating fake news to compensate for their battlefield losses.”
“To hide the truth, they presented to the media and to the public a rehashed discovery of blasting caps, improvised explosive devices, radio equipment, other war materials, and documents with their usual preposterous claim that bloodstain is present in the withdrawal route and that NPA suffered casualties without presenting any credible evidence,” the NPA rebel said.