2 NPA guerilla fronts fall to AFP’s Nolcom troops

(FILES) This file photo taken on April 19, 2017 shows New Peopleís Army guerillas, the armed wing of the Maoist rebels, marching during the turn-over ceremony of captured government soldiers to officials and peace advocates in the hinterlands of Matanao town, Davao del Sur province on the southern island of Mindanao. AFP PHOTO / MANMAN DEJETO

CITY OF SAN FERNANDO, Pampanga—The Northern Luzon Command (Nolcom) of the Armed Forces of the Philippines on Tuesday (Oct. 18) claimed to have dismantled two guerilla fronts of the New People’s Army in the Cagayan Valley region during the last three months.

The west and east front committees also fell to Nolcom forces, it said in a statement released from Camp Aquino in Tarlac City.

It did not cite which fronts straddle the Cagayan Valley provinces of Batanes, Cagayan, Isabela, Nueva Vizcaya, and Quirino.

Comments by the NPA in those areas cannot be immediately obtained.

The third quarter of 2022 also saw the arrest and surrender of 25 “communist terrorist personalities” and the seizure of 60 firearms, military and police commanders reported in a review and assessment held on Monday.

According to Nolcom, it has assisted 1,156 former rebels in availing of the government’s Enhanced Comprehensive Local Integration Program since 2018.

Communist insurgency in the Ilocos, Cagayan Valley, Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR) and Central Luzon regions is “at the tipping point and it only needs one final push,” Nolcom chief Lt. Gen Ernesto Torres Jr. said.

Earlier, he announced that CAR remained the last bastion of that five-decade-old insurgency. INQ

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