Forest ranger slain in Laguna ambush

CAMP PACIANO RIZAL, Laguna—Unidentified men believed to be part of illegal logging syndicates attacked a group of forest rangers collecting illegally cut logs in a Laguna town on Monday, killing one of the rangers, a regional environment official on Tuesday said.

Reynulfo Juan, head of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources (DENR) in Calabarzon (Cavite, Laguna, Batangas, Rizal and Quezon), said the group of forest rangers was transporting illegally cut logs in Barangay San Antonio in Kalayaan, Laguna, when their pickup truck was fired at around 2 p.m. on Monday.

One of the DENR men, Jessie Comendador from Pila, Laguna, was shot in the head.

Juan said Comendador was rushed to the Laguna provincial hospital in Sta. Cruz town but died about an hour later. The other members of the DENR team, he said, suffered minor injuries from the attack.

The gunmen escaped after the shooting, prompting the DENR to seek help from the police and the Philippine Army, which has a camp about a kilometer from the ambush site.

Col. Leoncio Cirunay Jr., deputy commander of the Army’s 202nd brigade and head of the government’s anti-illegal logging task force in the region, said he believed the gunmen were companions of suspected loggers earlier arrested by authorities in Real, Quezon.

The task force, on Sunday afternoon, arrested seven persons and recovered from them 700 board feet of yakal logs, after receiving reports that illegal loggers were transporting the logs being towed by at least 18 carabaos.

Cirunay said the seven arrested men turned out to be residents of Kalayaan, Laguna, where the ambush took place.

“This comes with the job,” Juan said in a phone interview on Tuesday as he was inspecting the ambush site.

He said the attack on his men didn’t stop the DENR men from collecting illegally cut logs in the area.

The DENR and other government agencies began a massive anti-logging operation on July 13 in the Real-Mauban-Kalayaan boundary in Quezon and Laguna provinces.