ILOILO CITY - Suspected communist rebels shot dead an Army official attending a town fiesta in Capiz province at around 6 p.m. Saturday night.

1Lt. Abelardo Mutya died of around 10 gunshot wounds after he was repeatedly shot in Dumarao town south of Roxas City, said Maj. Lyndon Sollesta, spokesperson of the Army's 3rd Infantry Division.

Sollesta said two suspects armed with .45 caliber handguns approached Mutya as he was about to board a motorcycle and shot him, then took his .45 caliber pistol, wallet and cellphone.

Witnesses also saw at least five other suspects who acted as lookouts. The suspects retreated towards the hinterland villages of Dumarao after the shooting.

Mutya who was alone and in civilian clothes was pronounced dead on arrival at the Dumarao District hospital.

"The mode of killing is similar to the tactics being used by the NPA's Sparrow Unit," Sollesta said in a telephone interview.

The slain Army official was head of the Civilian Military Operations of the 12th Infantry Battalion based in Miag-ao town in Iloilo and was formerly assigned in Dumarao under the 33rd Division Reconnaissance Company, said Sollesta.

Sollesta said Mutya attended the town fiesta on invitation of the town mayor because he had formerly been assigned in the area.

The 3ID condemned the killing. Sollesta said the slain soldier upheld the human rights even of captured and wounded New People's Army rebels.

He said Mutya who led a team of soldiers that clashed with NPA rebels in Dumarao in 2004 pushed for the hospitalization of a wounded rebel captured after the clash.

The suspects are believed to be under the Central Front Committee of the Communist Party of the Philippines on Panay Island.

Troops belonging to the 47th Infantry Battalion are conducting pursuit operations against the rebels. Rebels have launched attacks in Dumarao in recent years including the burning of a cell site and equipment of a construction firm whom the rebels said refused to pay their "revolutionary taxes."

Sollesta cautioned government troops against the "liquidation operations" of the NPA.

The NPA has also killed a policemen and alleged military informers in Iloilo and Antique provinces in recent weeks.*NPB

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