Slain army lieutenant given military honors

LEGAZPI City, Philippines—A slain Army lieutenant was given military honors on Sunday before his flag-bearing casket was put on a Philippine Air Force (PAF) Fokker plane bound for Davao City, an Army official said.

Colonel Arthur Ang, commanding officer of the 901st Infantry Brigade here, said members of the Army’s 2nd Infantry Battalion gave the slain soldier a military salute for his gallantry and after the honors rite, his remains were boarded on the military plane that would bring him to his hometown in Davao.

Army 2nd Lieutenant George Tiago, 27, was slain on Saturday when communist rebels ambushed soldiers on a medical mission in Barangay (village) Nabasan, a hinterland village in Daraga, Albay.

Ang, in a phone interview Sunday, condemned the communist rebel attack for attacking Army soldiers and a civilian doctor who were on a medical mission.

“What is abhorable is they are targeting soldiers on humanitarian mission,” Ang said.

Despite the killing, Ang said they would continue “to give our services to people in villages needing our help and relentlessly go after these rebels who sow terror in remote communities.”

However, he added, combat operations would be intensified to give justice to slain soldiers who were victims of atrocities by the New People’s Army (NPA), the armed wing of the Communist Party of the Philippine (CPP).

Tiago was on board an Army truck with a group of soldiers and a doctor carrying medical supplies for Barangay Nabasan when it was waylaid by about 15 NPA rebels as the vehicle was negotiating a road in the vicinity of Barangays San Vicente Grande and Nabasan past 9 a.m. Saturday.

Tiago were among a 10-man group of soldiers, led by Major Narzan Obuyes, who had scheduled the medical mission on the request of villagers in Nabasan. Tiago was the lone fatality in the ambush while another soldier, Private First Class Genesis Broso, was wounded.