Three dead in rebel attack ahead of Philippine vote

MANILA — Communist guerrillas killed three members of the Philippine security forces Thursday and wounded eight others in attacks ahead of final preparations for next week’s elections, officials said.

The ambushes brought to 60 the number of people dead in violence linked to the May 13 vote, where politicians are contesting more than 300 seats in parliament and thousands of local executive posts.

New People’s Army rebels ambushed a government convoy that was delivering election equipment to a mountainous area near the northern city of Tabuk, killing two soldiers, their unit commander Colonel Roger Salvador told AFP.

“They did not manage to get any of the (voting) machines, but the escorts got hit,” Salvador told AFP, referring to scanners that would be used to tally votes at nearly 37,000 polling precincts.

The ambush also left six other military escorts wounded, said Senior Superintendent Froilan Perez, police chief in Kalinga province of which Tabuk is the capital.

Perez said the scanners have to be delivered to polling centers for final testing ahead of Monday’s balloting, in which more than 52 million Filipinos are qualified to vote.

None of the civilian election workers in the convoy were hurt, the police official added.

NPA rebels ambushed a second convoy delivering ballot scanners near the eastern town of Ragay at dawn, killing a member of a local militia force trained by the military, said local army commander Lieutenant-Colonel Michael Buhat.

Two soldiers who were also part of the security team escorting the convoy were wounded, he added.

The Philippine military has said the NPA is using the elections to raise millions of dollars by extorting money from candidates. Those who refuse to pay up are attacked, officials say.

Last month the NPA ambushed the mayor of a southern town, killing two of her aides and leaving her and two policemen wounded.

The 4,000-member NPA has been waging a 44-year-old Maoist armed campaign that has claimed at least 30,000 lives, according to a government estimate.

Last week, President Benigno Aquino’s government said its peace talks with the communists had collapsed and a target of ending the insurgency by 2016 was impossible to achieve.