LUCENA CITY – Police and military officials in Quezon province have strongly condemned the attack by New People’s Army (NPA) rebels on police officers in a food aid mission in Buenavista town on Saturday.
“Isa ito sa patunay na ang mga teroristang grupong ito ay pabigat at salot sa ating lipunan (This is one proof that this terrorist group is a burden and pest in our society),” Lieutenant Colonel Emmanuel Cabahug, commander of the 85th Army Infantry Battalion, said in a statement posted on social media Sunday.
“Let us not allow this treacherous and cowardly attack against our lawmen and soldiers to diminish our progress to attain real and lasting peace,” Police Colonel Joel Villanueva, Quezon police chief, said in a separate statement.
The soldiers and Citizen Armed Forces Geographical Unit (Cafgu) personnel aboard a military truck were providing security to local police after conducting “barangayanihan” to Indigenous Peoples in Barangay Del Rosario when they were attacked by five NPA rebels in Barangay (village) Batabat Sur around 11:40 a.m., a police report said.
The government militiamen, Romar Gono, Bajamunde Arne, and Army Staff Sergeant Victor Bartocillo sustained bullet wounds and were taken to Magsaysay Memorial District Hospital in Lopez town. However, Gono died along the way.
Police recovered remnants of improvised explosives left by the rebels at the ambush site.
Villanueva noted that the police were in Del Rosario village “to assist our fellowmen who are greatly affected by this pandemic.”
Policemen across the country have been distributing food aid and other essential needs in their version of community pantry.
The project is dubbed as “barangayanihan, a combination of the Tagalog words “barangay” (village) and “bayanihan” (cooperativism).
Cabahug and Villanueva condoled with Gono’s family.
The report said Gono, 22, was a farmer and sixth among seven siblings of a peasant couple in Buenavista.